The Trouble with Ghosts
by Lynse
Summary: Lancer hadn't realized how closely young Mr. Fenton's school troubles–-and the secrets he surely wasn't telling his parents–-were tied to ghosts until after that encounter with Phantom.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hey, look, a fic I started writing…over four years ago…and only finally updated again in the spring after posting some of it to tumblr. Anyway, this bit's the teaser, the hook, to let you know what's coming if you decide to stick with this fic. Lots of **blood** off the start. As always, standard disclaimers apply.

* * *

Mr. Lancer stared in shock at the boy in front of him. He was having trouble believing his eyes. It couldn't possibly be…. But it was. He knew it had to be, even if he didn't understand why.

To keep such a secret from nearly everyone….

His parents couldn't know. Lancer was certain of it. Knowing them, they would have tried to do something about it. But if he'd learned anything from teaching the child, it was that young Mr. Fenton was stubborn. He would have kept on doing it if he felt he was doing the right thing, which he surely did. Nothing his parents said would have been able to dissuade him.

But to see him now would surely break Mr. and Mrs. Fentons' hearts, however proud they might have been of their son for following in their footsteps and hunting ghosts.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to _end_ like this.

The green smears along the classroom floor were Danny Phantom's ectoplasm, Lancer knew. The wounds had been deep, and they had taken more out of him than he had known. The lifeblood of Amity Park's infamous ghost boy had finally been shed with the hunter's blow. Though Lancer didn't want to admit it, he wasn't certain that the boy's remarkable resilience would be enough this time.

The smudged handprint on the classroom door had been what had first alerted him to this scene. The normal, eerie glow that he usually associated with ectoplasm had been conspicuously absent. There was only the odd speck of ectoplasm between the door and the first desk, but after that, it was clear that Phantom had collapsed. The legs of the desks were sticky with drying ectoplasm, the path to one particular desk laid out in dull, sickly green.

The streaks made it clear that Phantom had been reduced to crawling. Inching his way along, trying to keep moving. But the greatest amount of green was the stain beneath the desk Danny Fenton currently occupied. The pooled ectoplasm still held the distinct shimmer that the other traces had lost, betraying its origin. The alarming size of the pool meant that despite Phantom's efforts, he couldn't stem the flow. And to make matters worse, the stain on the tile was growing.

It was the mixture that made Lancer's stomach turn as much as the sight of poor Danny Fenton himself. Drying swirls of red danced amongst the green, making a mockery of the Christmas colours. These two did not belong together, not here, not like this. And yet there they were, defying everything. Ectoplasm and blood.

The green marks were replaced by red, stretching up the desk. Red coated metal, running along chipped paint before pooling into droplets about to fall. It filled the graffiti on the desktop left by various children over the years, emphasizing the scratched-in scribblings of the past. Most distressingly, blood still oozed from the wounds. It slid down matted hair already slippery with the fluid. Dripped steadily from the slick tips. Landed on the desk and blossomed outwards, gliding downwards toward the edge, ready to gather, waiting to fall, eager to mix with the green coating that marred the white tile floor.

Lancer could not see much of Danny from this angle, particularly as the boy was slumped over the front of the desk, but there was no denying that it was him. It was also no question that he was hurt terribly. He was so pale. He'd lost so much blood.

" _Lord of the Flies_ , Mr. Fenton," Lancer murmured, his eyes following a dark red droplet as it fell free from the desk's edge and tumbled onto the floor. Drop by drop. One after the other. A drip far too steady for comfort. "How did this happen to you?"


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the teaser chapter! All of you are wonderful people. This chapter takes a step back and helps set the scene for that.

* * *

 **Earlier that day...**

 _1\. Describe the relationship between Boo Radley and Jem, Dill, and Scout. How is this relationship beneficial to each of the characters?_

 _2\. Relate the trial scene and its outcome to that of one of the underlying themes of the novel which we discussed in class. Use examples._

 _3\. What literary device was used at the beginning of the novel? In your opinion, was its use effective? Why or why not?_

Danny groaned. He finally got to an opinion question and he _still_ couldn't answer it. Well, not really well. He'd read the first chapter, yes. He'd read the last chapter. He'd read the synopsis on the back of the book. That was about it.

He'd gotten the impression that the book wasn't actually about killing mockingbirds, but usually he had marginally better luck than this. True, Sam and Tucker had given him the abbreviated version right before class, but he couldn't remember what they'd said now. If only he'd realized that the test was today….

Suffice to say that the time he'd had once he'd remembered—two hours—wasn't enough time to read a novel. Not for him, anyway, and not when he was supposed to be paying attention in his other classes.

He should have known. Sam and Tucker had reminded him. He'd just forgotten. Somewhere between scrawling something down for the stupid essay Mr. Lancer had had due today, too, and writing a hasty lab report for biology, and fighting off all the ghosts, well, it had slipped his mind. He'd thought he'd had a day's grace.

Apparently not.

Danny's eyes slipped down to the last question.

 _10\. Discuss the role of family and contrast today's ideology with the one described in the novel. Support your answer using examples from the Finch family. Don't forget to include Aunt Alexandra._

Why couldn't Lancer's tests be multiple choice or true or false or something? Even if just a portion of it was, it would be better than straight short answer. He'd at least have a hope of passing then.

Danny sighed. He started writing down something, figuring Lancer might, if he was feeling generous, give him credit for being creative. And he was being creative. He took what he knew, which was very little, and invented everything else, hoping his guesses were somewhat plausible within the context of the story. There were two obvious opinion questions, which he milked for all they were worth, and then he spent the rest of his time trying to jot something down elsewhere.

Not to mention trying to remember what Tucker had said about Boo Radley, and Sam about Mrs. Dubose, and what the two had been trying to tell him about the symbolism of the book's title, which was the fifth question.

Five minutes before the end of class, Danny's ghost sense went off. He was pretty certain he'd just failed another English test, but he stuck his hand in the air anyway.

"Yes, Mr. Fenton?" Lancer asked, sounding resigned.

"Can I go to the bathroom?"

Lancer sighed. "Class will be over shortly, Mr. Fenton. I would advise you use what little time you have left to finish your exam."

"Please?" Danny asked. "I'm done, and I really, really have to go." Not true, but better to hear the snickers from his classmates than to let the ghost, whoever it was, destroy more than it undoubtedly already had.

"Very well, but I want to speak to you when you come back."

Crud. Mr. Lancer had probably seen his half-finished essay. Danny had noticed him marking them while they were writing their test. "Yes, sir," he said, grabbing his backpack and dropping his test on Lancer's desk before running out of the room.

A quick transformation in the boys' washroom later, and Danny Phantom phased through the roof of the school to confront the latest ghost threat.

The Box Ghost.

Danny groaned. He could've finished his test. Not that it would've helped much, but still. "Did you have to come now?" he complained.

"Beware!" the Box Ghost cried. "I—"

"I don't care," Danny interrupted, his hands flaming green as he blasted the Box Ghost a few times. "I'm busy."

The Box Ghost kept ranting, of course, but Danny had the advantage. The Box Ghost had probably been heading for one of the supply rooms in the school again, looking for more boxes, but he'd cut him off at the pass. He stopped shooting ectoblasts long enough to unscrew the cap on the Fenton Thermos—thankfully Jazz and Sam and Tuck kept reminding him to keep one in his backpack—and turn its beam on the Box Ghost, who hadn't managed to fly very far away. With the Box Ghost trapped, Danny turned intangible and slipped down into the school again. The entire encounter hadn't lasted five minutes.

Lancer was right. He could've waited until the end of class. But he hadn't had any guarantee that it wasn't someone more destructive. Technus had tried taking over all the computers in the school last week, for instance. If Danny had ignored his ghost sense that time, the school wouldn't have any computers left.

They also wouldn't necessarily need to replace one of the walls of the computer lab, but some things were unavoidable.

The lunch bell rang. Sam and Tucker would be waiting for him by his locker, but he had to meet with Mr. Lancer. If he was lucky, it wouldn't last very long. If he wasn't, Dash would find him on his way there or back and shove him into his locker in anticipation of failing the test they'd just written.

Danny lost no time changing back to his human form and heading back to Lancer's classroom. The teacher was still there, at his desk, frowning down at a pile of papers. He looked up at Danny's hesitant knock on the door.

"Ah, Mr. Fenton," Lancer said. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

"Sorry, sir," Danny mumbled. "I just, um, wasn't feeling the best."

Lancer gave him a look that told Danny he didn't believe a word. "Close the door, Mr. Fenton, and sit down. It's time we had a talk."

Oh, great. He was probably going to phone home this time. Danny should have known that having Jazz forge his parents' signatures would only get him so far. "Is it about the test?" Danny asked hesitantly. "Or the essay?"

"That's not all it's about," Lancer replied. "Your grades have not improved over the last eight months, Mr. Fenton. Longer, even. They haven't improved since that sharp decline they took, and you're giving me no reason to expect them to improve."

Danny stared at the desk and said nothing.

"Would you care to explain yourself?"

 _No_. But Danny still didn't say anything.

" _Flowers for Algernon_ , Danny! I'm trying to help you. At least look at me."

Danny looked up, partially because he couldn't stare at the desk forever but mostly because he was surprised that Lancer had called him 'Danny'. He did it on occasion, of course, usually when he was trying to wake him up, but it wasn't the norm by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe Lancer was trying to be less formal, to make him more comfortable. Still, Danny didn't say anything. He had a horrible feeling that if he did, the situation would just go from bad to worse. Mr. Lancer might just let him go if he saw he wasn't getting any response.

"Is it trouble at home?"

"No," Danny said immediately, but he instantly regretted it when he saw the look of triumph in Mr. Lancer's eye. He'd probably known that answer already and had just been hoping to provoke a reaction from Danny.

Unfortunately for him, it had worked.

"School, then? Perhaps in the form of Mr. Baxter?"

Danny's eyes widened, just slightly. He'd thought Lancer had ignored that because Dash was the star quarterback. Of course, Danny could count the number of times Dash had gotten punished for his bullying on one hand, but still. The fact that Lancer acknowledged it instead of explaining it away had to be an improvement of some sort.

As Danny remembered the question, though, he shook his head again. "No, Mr. Lancer. It's fine. I'm fine. Nothing's wrong."

"Mr. Fenton, you may not be as bright as your sister, but you _are_ cleverer than you give yourself credit for."

Ouch. Was that supposed to cheer him up? But then again, Jazz was the smartest kid in school, as far as he knew. That was probably all Lancer had meant. Though he had, Danny noticed, gone back to being formal. Maybe he figured sounding stricter would be more likely to get him an answer?

"I'm trying my best, sir," Danny said.

Lancer shook his head. "You aren't," he countered. "If you put a little more effort into your studies, I'm sure you could ace every test." He paused. "Or very nearly, at least."

Danny swallowed, knowing Mr. Lancer was thinking of the 19th century poetry test he'd had him rewrite one time. He had done pretty well after Lancer had forced him to study. The teacher had even given up his time to help him. But while he'd been doing that, he'd left Sam and Tucker to deal with Technus by themselves, and they nearly hadn't managed it. He didn't want to shirk his ghost hunting responsibilities and leave it to Sam and Tuck when he was probably one of the main reasons the ghosts came through into the Real World in the first place.

"What I would like to know, Mr. Fenton, is why you don't care enough about your schoolwork to put more effort into it."

"It's not that I don't care. I'm just…busy," Danny mumbled, looking down at the desk again.

"I'm sure you are," Lancer said dryly. " _Hanging_ with your fellow _dudes_ , as I'm sure you would put it. I am a teacher, Danny, and contrary to popular belief, I'm not completely oblivious to the lives of my students. You're involved in something, and I think you may be in over your head."

Danny winced. "What gave you that idea?"

Mr. Lancer raised his eyebrows. "Besides your grades? You're in detention nearly every day of the week. You come to class late, leave early, or skip it altogether, and I am certainly not the only teacher in this school to doubt your feeble excuses. Not to mention," he added, "I find it rather unpleasant to mark papers which have been drooled upon."

Danny cringed. "Sorry," he murmured. Usually Sam and Tucker woke him up before it got to that point, though. Thankfully. Falling asleep in class was bad enough, but drooling was just embarrassing.

"I want to help you, Danny," Lancer said, "but you need to give me the chance, and you need to trust me. Keeping you after school to watch you do your homework isn't going to solve the problem. We both know how well that's been working so far."

Mr. Lancer was looking at him expectantly. Danny sighed. "I'm fine, Mr. Lancer. Really."

Mr. Lancer looked disappointed. "Very well, Mr. Fenton. I'll see you after school today."

"What? Why?"

"Because your essay leaves something to be desired," Lancer said. "A few supporting paragraphs and a conclusion, to be exact."

"It had a conclusion," Danny muttered.

"One incomplete sentence does not a conclusion make," Lancer returned lightly. "I'll see you later, Mr. Fenton. You may go."

Danny groaned but didn't protest. This was going to be a long day.

* * *

Over the course of his teaching career, Mr. Lancer had run into very few cases where he had been unable to get to the root of the problem of a student's troubles. However, Danny's situation was particularly vexing. He had long ago ruled out troubles at home. Though Mr. and Mrs. Fenton were undoubtedly eccentric, they were well-meaning and wanted the best for their children. Besides, he taught Jasmine Fenton as well, and she had shown no signs of distress as Danny had, and he had no doubt that she would alert someone if anything troublesome for Danny did arise at the Fenton household.

He'd become aware of Dash's bullying of Danny—and a number of other children—but hadn't found the right way to stop it without unintentionally causing Danny and the others to become targets off the school grounds. But he wasn't certain that the bullying Danny endured was the cause of his troubles. It wasn't something he could rule out easily, of course. Danny showed no physical signs of harm, and he remained in a tight friendship with Tucker Foley and Sam Manson, so his emotional state could not be in dire straits, even if it was affected.

It didn't fit with drugs or drink or gang relations or anything else of that sort. It didn't fit with any situation he could think of, to be perfectly honest. Danny didn't even have the attitude of a slacker, not really. He usually made an effort to be moderately attentive when he was in class, if only for a portion of it.

Well, excepting the times he fell asleep, which were unfortunately more common than Lancer would have liked. He didn't approve of the blank, bleary-eyed stare the boy adopted, either, when he was struggling to just barely keep his eyes open.

But what would prompt that? What was keeping him up at night?

Lancer frowned. He knew Mr. Fenton was a fan of video games, but he doubted his addiction had gone quite that far. Danny seemed to have a good sense of responsibility.

He just chose to ignore that when it came to his schoolwork, offering no good excuses for doing so.

Perhaps it was a family issue after all, but one of rebellion. He hadn't thought Maddie and Jack were particularly strict, but perhaps they had expectations that Danny didn't want to live up to, expectations on which Jazz had thrived. Yet that still didn't quite ring true. Miss Manson, after all, was clearly a teenager in rebellion against her parents, but she was still a bright student. He rather doubted she would encourage Danny to make a statement by ignoring his schoolwork, even if she didn't discourage it. If it weren't for Mr. Foley and Miss Manson, Mr. Lancer rather doubted that Danny would even be passing all the classes he was.

As far as he could tell, Danny was still trying in school. But for all of his good intentions, he did not put nearly the amount of effort into his studies that he should. That, of course, simply begged the question of what he truly was up to, and Mr. Lancer found that he'd reasoned himself back to square one, and he was none the wiser for it.

Lancer checked his watch and frowned. Danny should have been here ten minutes ago, but there was still no sign of him. Another twenty minutes passed, and Mr Lancer put his pen down with a sigh. Mr. Fenton usually wasn't one to skip his detentions, and when he did come in late, it was generally only by a few minutes.

He'd hoped to have a longer talk with Danny before phoning his parents, but clearly that wasn't going to be happening. He pulled out his cell phone and started to input the number he wished he'd never had to memorize: 555-122—

The outside wall of the room exploded inwards.

Mr. Lancer wasn't entirely sure whether he'd dropped his cell phone or if it had been knocked out of his hand by the force of the implosion, but he knew he wasn't holding it anymore. He was just thankful he'd been sitting down. And that he'd been behind his desk, which was mercifully at the front of the room and consequently had—mostly—escaped the line of fire.

Lancer dragged his eyes away from the gaping hole in the wall when he heard the debris shifting. It didn't take him long to make out the familiar outline of Danny Phantom in the rubble. It did surprise him, though. In any of the ghost fights he'd witnessed, Phantom didn't let something like being thrown through a wall stop him.

It was comforting that no ghost had followed Phantom into the school, but the fact that Phantom hadn't moved certainly wasn't.

When most of the dust had settled, Lancer carefully got to his feet. For all that he lived in Amity Park, he didn't know much about ghosts. As a general rule, he didn't trust them, and he was more terrified of them than he perhaps ought to be. But Phantom was the sole exception to that rule. Lancer couldn't necessarily verbalize all the reasons for that, but despite a few unsavoury actions in Phantom's past, the ghost seemed trustworthy.

"Phantom?" Lancer called softly as he approached. If ghosts could look ill, he certainly did. His usually-bright glow was dimmed to the point of being nonexistent, and he looked ashen. Or perhaps that was an effect of the dust. With the poor light in the room, even accounting for the sunlight streaming through the hole in the wall, it was hard to tell.

"Phantom?" Lancer called again, crouching down to get a better look at the ghost. There was still no response. Now that he was closer, however, he could see why. Sticky green ectoplasm had matted hair on one side of Phantom's head. Add that to a rather large gash on his side and a few smaller ones that were likely due to the crash, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that Phantom had been knocked out.

What Lancer found surprising was that this could even happen. He'd always figured that the ghosts that were clearly ghosts of the deceased would lose their form if they lost consciousness. He wasn't so sure about the other types of ghosts, the ones that seemed more like masses of ectoplasm bound together by some unknown force or the sort that may have once been human but had been dead so long that they'd lost any semblance of humanity they must once have had.

He knew that ectoplasm was the equivalent of a ghost's blood, that the fluid ectoplasm within their forms had slightly different properties than the solid ectoplasm that made up their exterior. Like the rest of the teachers at Casper High, he'd attended lectures hosted by Jack and Maddie Fenton. But even thinking about the glowing substance as blood made him realize just how much Phantom had lost, and it was still oozing out now.

The Fentons' Ghost Information Sessions hadn't included anything about healing ghosts or even basic anatomy. That hadn't been deemed relevant. So while he knew a few basics in terms of hunting them with the Fentons' weapons and all about a ghost's devious nature and the many ways it might try to trick you, he wasn't sure how to help the young ghost who lay before him now.

"Perhaps I should just treat him like I would a human," Lancer murmured, looking the ghost over again with a more critical eye. He'd need to apply pressure to that side wound, no doubt, and deal with his head wound. He didn't appear to have broken any bones—did ghosts have bones to break?—though he probably would have more than a few nasty bruises.

It wasn't far to the nurse's office and, therefore, access to all the medical supplies he could want. As the vice principal, he had a key to every room in the school, so accessing it would be no problem. And, if he was lucky, he could get there before anyone noticed what he was up to. He was rather surprised that the crash hadn't attracted any attention yet, but he wasn't going to question his luck. He knew things could be much worse, after all. If Miss Sanchez's group, the Phantom Phan Club, had been meeting today…. Well, he wouldn't have had any peace. Certainly Phantom wouldn't have, and now was when he needed it most.

Carefully, Lancer picked him up. The ghost was surprisingly solid. Though lighter than a human his size would have been, Phantom had more mass than Lancer had imagined a ghost would. And he wasn't as cold, either, as ghost tales from beyond Amity Park had led Lancer to believe. It was certainly nothing like handling ice.

After a moment, Phantom's eyes flickered open. They were duller than normal, the electric green blaze that normally lit them conspicuously absent. "Mr. Lancer?" he whispered.

Lancer was surprised that Phantom knew his name, but he supposed that the ghost did show up around the school regularly to fight off other ghosts. "Yes," he said gently. "Try not to move too much, Mr. Phantom. You've lost a lot of ectoplasm. I'm taking you to the nurse's office."

Phantom's eyes widened, the spark behind them flaring back to life. He shook his head. "No, I'll be fine," he said, sounding much more awake now. "That won't be necessary, uh, citizen…."

Lancer raised his eyebrows but did not stop his steady pace until he reached the nurse's office. He already had his key out, so it was simple to get into the room and leave Phantom on the bed. The ghost immediately scrambled to his feet and winced. "I wouldn't advise leaving quite yet, Phantom," Lancer said softly. "You're injured. And you don't need to worry. I'm not going to turn you over to the Fentons."

Phantom sighed and sat back down. He acted more energetic than he was, Lancer noted. He was clutching his side, for one, and his movements were careful and precise. He could undoubtedly feel every one of those scrapes. He examined the wound in his side, which was still leaking ectoplasm, and then looked back at Lancer. "Can you pass the gauze?"

"You've done this before," Mr. Lancer surmised, not sure why he was surprised.

"I've gotten injured before," Phantom said dully. "I might heal faster than a human, but this cut's deep."

"Where do you get your supplies?" Lancer asked.

Phantom didn't answer, simply taking the offered gauze and bandages and setting them down beside him. "Crud," he muttered, poking at the wound. "I should probably strip down to do this. It'll last longer." And, to Lancer's surprise, he reached up and undid a near-invisible zipper that ran up the front of his suit. He carefully eased out his right arm, hissing a bit as he jarred his side.

Mr. Lancer just stared. The ghost boy began treating his wound, cleaning it off a bit before bandaging it up as well as a professional. But even more surprising than the boy's skill was how… _human_ he looked. Admittedly, Lancer never, on principle, stayed close to ghosts, but Phantom had always appeared less threatening than other ghosts, more, well, human, and now…. Lancer hadn't been expecting a haze rather than a defined shape beneath the boy's suit, per se, but he hadn't expected it to be so…normal.

Perhaps it was the continued lack of the ghost's bright glow. If he ignored the unnaturally white hair or eerily bright green eyes, well, Phantom wasn't much different from the students he taught. A bit too pale, and much too comfortable with battles and injuries, but nevertheless a witty, determined young man who stood up for what he believed in and strived to help others. An admirable soul.

Phantom zipped the front of his suit back up and cocked an eyebrow at Lancer. "What?"

It had to be impolite to ask a ghost how he had died or how long he had been dead, so Lancer stilled his tongue, though he couldn't help but wonder, especially since he suspected that might be the reason Phantom was much more tolerable than the other ghosts that frequented Amity Park. "Do you remember what happened?" he asked instead.

Phantom stared at him, surprised. Then he hummed out an affirmative response before elaborating, "The Red Huntress. It wasn't her initially—she came after me, not the other way around—but by the time I had Skulker trapped, she'd found me. She had to show me some of her new weapons." He rubbed one arm. "She had a few I wasn't expecting." Before Lancer could think to ask how Phantom would be expecting any of them, the ghost added, "I was trying to lose her. I didn't mean to bring the fight to the school. I mean, it worked, since I don't think she likes coming into the school like that, but…." He trailed off. "Sorry about the wall. The damage probably wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't managed to hit me."

"Do you know what she hit you with?" Lancer asked carefully.

"Something that packed a punch," Phantom replied. "Beyond that, no." He hopped off the bed. "Thanks," he said. "For, you know, not turning me in or anything. But I've got to go."

"Phantom, you don't look well," Lancer cautioned.

"I'm fine," Phantom said, but the response sounded automatic to Lancer's ears. And as chipper and cocky as Phantom was acting, Lancer had been teaching kids for enough years to be able to read between the lines. Even if Phantom wasn't admitting it, wasn't acting like it, he couldn't keep the pain he was feeling off his face, and he'd as good as admitted to worrying about the cut on his side.

Lancer gently pushed him back onto the bed. "No," he said. "Your head wound is still bleeding." Not to mention his side. Even in the time they'd been talking, Lancer could see through the tear in Phantom's suit that the gauze he'd taped over the wound was already turning green.

"Huh?" Phantom blinked and reached up. He winced as he touched a tender spot and sucked in a breath when he saw the ectoplasm on his glove. "Oh," was all he said.

"Can you even see straight?" Lancer asked doubtfully.

"I've had worse," Phantom said, though he sounded a lot more uncertain than he had a moment ago.

"Who helps you, Phantom?" Lancer asked quietly. "You can't be doing this on your own."

Phantom mumbled something incoherent and shrugged one shoulder; he was still being careful enough not to move the other more than necessary.

Lancer raised his eyebrows. "I was supposed to meet with a student today, but he decided not to show up. As such, I've time enough to look after you, and we'll spare the friends you must have the trouble of patching you up." When Phantom didn't protest, Lancer began to carefully clean the wound on his head. The ghost flinched a few times but otherwise held still.

After a few minutes, Phantom said, "I thought you were scared of ghosts."

Lancer chuckled. "Terrified, I assure you."

"Then why help me?"

"Because you need it," Lancer said, "whether you admit to that or not. And because you, Mr. Phantom, seem to do more than your fair share when it comes to protecting this town, despite your dubious nature."

"Oh. Um, thanks, I guess."

Lancer, having finished bandaging Phantom up, looked him over once more. "You still don't quite look yourself," he said.

"What do you mean?" The words came out in a rush and sounded, to Lancer's ears, slightly panicked.

Lancer frowned. "You normally seem…brighter," he finally said.

Phantom immediately held a hand in front of his face, studying it. Then, slowly, deliberately, he pressed down onto the bed. After another few seconds, he said, "Oh, crud."

"Would you care to elaborate?"

Phantom bit his lip, then admitted, "I can't, um, use my powers. Well, I can't go invisible or intangible or fly, and that's the basic stuff, so I'm assuming that if I can't do that, I can't do anything else, either." He sighed. "Serves me right for getting hit, I guess." He held up his hand again, stared at it, and shook his head. At Lancer's curious look, he explained, "I can't build up an ectoblast, either."

"There's something that can render a ghost harmless?"

"There's apparently something that can render me harmless," Phantom muttered. "That's also probably why I'm still bleeding. I'm not healing. Crud. This is not my day." He took a deep breath, seemed to make a decision, and jumped back off the bed. He wavered for a second, though whether he was unsteady on his feet because he was dizzy or simply unaccustomed to being held by gravity, Lancer couldn't say. "Thanks for all the help, Mr. Lancer, but I've got to go."

"You can't," Lancer protested, catching his arm. "With the Fentons and the Red Huntress on patrol, you'd be a sitting duck in the condition you're in."

"I don't have a choice," Phantom said, slipping out of Lancer's grip. "I'll figure this out somehow. Thanks." This time, he was out the door before Lancer could stop him.


	3. Chapter 3

Running _hurt_. A lot. And it reminded Danny that he didn't have a lot of energy right now.

He didn't make it very far from the nurse's office. Now that the rush of fear—adrenaline—was wearing off, now that Lancer wasn't _right there_ , right on top of his secret, it was getting harder to ignore the pain throbbing through him. When he started to stumble, he knew he couldn't even make it out of the school without a short rest. That the chemistry lab was still unlocked was the first bit of luck he'd had all day, and he was too tired to question it.

No invisibility, no intangibility, _no healing powers_ …. It had been hard pulling off the 'I'm not hurt as badly as you think I am' act with Mr. Lancer. All his practice trying to hide his injuries in a fight had saved him there. It had kept him focused. Steady. He appreciated Lancer's concern, he really did, but he needed help from someone who knew the whole story.

He didn't know what Valerie had hit him with, but if he had to guess, he'd say it was related to the Plasmius Maximus. With any luck, it would wear off in three hours. With his usual luck, it probably wouldn't.

"Running was a bad idea," Danny groaned, clutching the edges of a desk in the first row to steady himself. The room refused to stop spinning, and he was pretty sure he'd cracked at least one rib. He was also pretty sure that, however many times he'd gotten thrown into things and cut up and just generally beaten up, with or without breaking a few bones in the process, this hurt the worst. "Ow…."

Danny sunk to the floor. The classroom wasn't safe. At the very least, he needed to get away from the door. But it was a slow crawl to the back of the lab, trying not to breathe too deeply or jostle too much, even as he eyed the built-in tables and cupboards that were his goal. He might be able to shift around the Bunsen burners and hide in one of the cupboards….

Danny made it about a quarter of the way to the back before stopping and glancing behind him. The gauze taped onto his side had soaked through and was threatening to fall off—and if the damp feeling on his head was anything to go by, the same was true of that bandage—and he could see a slight green sheen on the floor from the smears that had come off of his clothes. Off of him.

No point in hiding when he'd be leaving a trail that led straight to him anyway.

"I can't stay here like this," Danny whispered.

Ow, ow, ow. How come breathing had to hurt so much? Ghost mode or not, the quick, shallow breaths he was taking weren't enough.

Okay, he had to think this through. No powers in ghost mode. No easy escape if he needed one. Lancer was right; he was a sitting duck waiting so patiently for the hunter to come along and destroy him. And that…would be very bad.

Maybe, if he changed back to Fenton, his parents would patch him up? That would invite a million questions, but he might be able to talk his way out of a hospital visit if he was careful. He could be sort of honest with them, after all. He could say that he was beaten up. He could pretend it was solely the work of a ghost. It shouldn't be that much of a stretch for them to believe that he could be targeted, and they'd be much more inclined to set up the Fenton Ecto-Containment Unit and care for him at home if they suspected he might have been exposed to some ecto-disease in the process.

It wasn't a great option, especially since it depended heavily on Jazz screening out any suspicious results they might find from some of their tests, but it was better than being found now as Phantom. After all, without his powers, there was no guarantee that Sam, Tucker, or Jazz could sneak him out of here undetected.

"Please let this work," Danny muttered, squeezing his eyes shut.

It came easily, just as it always did. Whatever had been done to him didn't stop him from changing forms. He didn't even need to look at himself to confirm the change; he could feel it. Aside from the normal feeling of slipping back into human form, there was a brief, miraculous, pain-free second.

And then the pain hit full force, easily feeling twice as bad as before.

"Bad idea," Danny muttered as blood started seeping through his shirt. He'd thought the bandages would transfer when he shifted forms, but they hadn't. He hadn't put enough concentration into it to force them to. And now his shirt was sticking to his cut and when he moved, it _burned_. Add that to the aching, stabbing pains he felt about everywhere else, and he wasn't in good condition by anyone's standards.

Even his hair hurt.

Although, that imagined pain could be explained by the head wound that was starting to drip blood into his eyes….

He needed to get out of here.

"Just take it slowly and it'll be fine," Danny whispered, wiping the blood out of his eyes with his free hand. His other still clutched his side, blood seeping between his fingers. Shouldn't it be clotting by now? The blood was running like the wounds were fresh. And the _smell_ …. It didn't normally bother him, but this time, when the scent of blood filled his nostrils and he could taste iron in his mouth and his hands were sticky with red….

What had he been hit with? Last he'd checked, Vlad didn't actually want him dead. Just subservient and faithful and….

Okay, normally he'd say he'd rather be dead, but he'd almost rather be in that situation and plotting revenge against Vlad than actually gone, because then Vlad would be one step closer to his family and accomplishing his sick goals.

Using a desk as a crutch, he pulled himself up into the chair. The blood smeared across the desk surface, the chair seat, the metal bar connecting the two…. This would take some cleaning up. Maybe…. He'd have to call Jazz. He'd never hear the end of it from her, but Tucker didn't do blood too well, not when it was like this, and Sam…. He couldn't bear the thought of seeing the look on Sam's face when she saw him like this. It had to be Jazz.

But his cell phone was in his locker.

Crud.

He wasn't sure he could make it that far.

His head hurt so much….

Scratch that. _Everything_ hurt. The pounding in his head just made it hard to think. And kinda hard to see. Swirls of black dots were swarming on the edge of his vision, creeping in closer with every second. It was moving rather quickly this time. Already his vision was black. Eyes wide open saw nothing, not even vague shadowy shapes. Not a good sign. Not when he needed to get out of here. Not when…when….

" _The Chrysalids_! Mr. Fenton!"

* * *

Mr. Lancer wasn't sure what to think.

He'd thought, if Danny Phantom had been telling him the truth, that he wouldn't be able to get far. That he truly needed help, despite his protests. So Lancer had done what he'd felt was the right thing: he'd gone after the boy.

Ghost or not, he was still a child. And when he was that beaten up, that worn down, he _needed_ the help of an adult, however stubborn he acted. And Lancer was not one to refuse to give help to anyone who needed it.

So, he'd started checking the rooms in the school. He knew he'd arrived at the right one before opening it when he saw a green smear on the handle and a smudge vaguely recognizable as a handprint on the door. He'd been expecting to find Danny Phantom there, nursing his wounds while trying to figure out where to hide. He hadn't been expecting to see Danny Fenton.

Even if he had, on some level, expected to find the boy who was supposed to be serving detention with him, he wouldn't have expected to find him in the condition he was in. Bleeding, bruising, unconscious at a desk….

This was far beyond high school bullying. This…who would have done this to him? Who _could_ have done this to him? Mr. Baxter had never struck him as someone who could….

He nearly slipped as he came closer and looked down to see a sickly green slime on the floor. _Ectoplasm_. Of course. Phantom had been here. But the only one here now was young Danny Fenton.

Lancer reached out slowly and shook him gently. "Mr. Fenton?"

Nothing.

"I need to get him to the hospital," Lancer muttered, immediately reaching for his cell phone.

It wasn't there. He'd dropped it, he now remembered, after the fight that had sent Phantom flying into his classroom. When he'd been about to phone the Fentons to tell them about Danny. But what could Danny have been—

" _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ ," Lancer breathed. "That's what you've been up to." He couldn't believe he hadn't seen it before.

All the unexplained absences. The flimsy excuses. The incomplete homework and obviously sleepless nights. He should have seen it before.

Danny Fenton was hunting ghosts.

For a split second, Lancer couldn't understand why Danny wouldn't tell his parents. Surely they'd be proud of the boy. He knew as well as anyone that Jack Fenton, at the very least, tried to get both his children to hunt ghosts. Then again, he also knew Maddie Fenton. She was protective of her children, no less so than her husband. If Danny was doing this alone, it was easy to construe it as dangerous.

The reason why was right in front of him.

He knew Jack's and Maddie's opinions of Phantom, but from the state of the boy in front of him, he doubted Danny shared it.

He doubted Phantom could have done much in his condition, and Lancer was willing to bet his retirement fund on the fact that Danny Fenton would do everything he could to protect Danny Phantom. He clearly had—and had paid the price.

" _Lord of the Flies_ , Mr. Fenton," Lancer murmured, his eyes lingering on the boy's still-bleeding head wound. "How did this happen to you?"

The answer was obvious, of course. This was Amity Park. The majority of their troubles stemmed from one problem and one problem only: ghosts. Young Mr. Fenton was the child of ghost hunters, and if he had tried to hunt them on his own, if he had managed it for quite some time, he would have made himself into an ideal target.

The main target, this time, might have been Phantom, but if Danny fiercely believed that Phantom was doing what _he_ was trying to do—protect people—then he would have defended him upon realizing that Phantom was unable to do so himself.

The other ghost—it had to be another ghost to get in and out of the classroom without disturbing anything—must have gone for Phantom, been attacked by Danny, retaliated in kind, grabbed Phantom, and left Danny in the sorry state he was in.

"Mr. Fenton?" Lancer tried again, tapping the boy sharply on his shoulder. "Danny?"

This time, he was rewarded with a faint groan.

"Danny, you're hurt," Lancer said. "Don't try to move."

"Mr. Lancer?" Danny mumbled, ignoring his teacher's command and sitting up. "What are you…?" He trailed off, hissing. "Ow…."

"You're hurt," Lancer repeated. "Do you remember? You were hurt in a ghost fight."

Instant fear, on the boy's face and in his eyes. "What?" Then, "You know?" By this point, Danny had managed to marginally school his expression, but he still bore the look of one who had been caught out.

Mr. Lancer's expression softened. "I know," he said. "When the pieces were right in front of me, it wasn't hard to figure out. Look, Danny, don't move. I'm going to get some supplies from the nurse's office, all right? We need to stop the bleeding."

Danny glanced down at his stained hands. The next words he spoke were nearly too quiet to hear. "You won't…tell, will you?"

"We need to stop the bleeding," Lancer said, well aware that he was dodging the question. "You might be going into shock. Just hold on. I'll be right back."

Danny nodded mutely, and Lancer lost no time in making good on his word. Once he had Danny putting pressure on his wounds—or, more accurately, holding something over them so they weren't bleeding freely, since Danny wasn't in a state of mind where he could judge the amount of pressure he was using—Lancer would phone the hospital and the Fentons. Not fifteen minutes earlier, he'd been happy that this wing was mostly unused for after school activities on this day of the week. Now, he would have been grateful to send someone else on those errands.

Even seeing the damage, he found it hard to believe that Danny Fenton was fighting ghosts. Oh, it would explain a few things—to begin with, his quick reflexes when he was awake—but the thought that Danny Fenton had worked so hard to keep this a secret…. Lancer couldn't help but wonder if it was worth the cost.

This had been going on for a while. Lancer had no doubt about that. He was also very sure that Mr. Foley and Miss Manson were well aware of Mr. Fenton's moonlighting. Danny must have miraculously escaped getting injured so badly before now or he was sure the silence would have been broken. Loyalty born of friendship, in his experience, didn't extend to allowing one's friend to nearly kill himself.

When Lancer returned with an armful of first aid supplies, Danny looked unfocused and bleary-eyed. He knew he had to act quickly and get him to the hospital. "Stay with me, Danny," Lancer said. "You're going to be fine." He held out a wad of gauze. "Can you hold this to your head?"

Bloodied fingers accepted it. "You don't have to do this, Mr. Lancer," Danny mumbled. "I'm gonna be fine."

"Of course you are," Lancer said soothingly, setting out the rest of the supplies. The boy had various cuts and bruises, but the next worst injury beyond the questionable head wound was undoubtedly the cut on his side that he was instinctively clutching. The same side, Lancer noted absently, where Phantom had been hurt. One fight with a determined ghost, and poor Danny Fenton was already hurt more than the one he'd been trying to protect.

Once he was sure Danny would be able to do the rest himself, Lancer knew he needed to phone the boy's parents. He shouldn't have put it off for this long, really, but without another helping hand, he'd wanted—needed—to stem the bleeding first. "I'm going to make a few phone calls and get you to the hospital, all right? Just keep pressure on your wounds as best you can."

"Not the first time I've done this," Danny muttered. "Don't need to go to the hospital."

"Nonsense, Mr. Fenton. You need stitches at the very least, and you may have a concussion. I'll be as quick as I can. Just wait here."

He heard a mumble from Danny, which Lancer took to be his agreement. He hated seeing one of his students in such horrific condition. He should have tried intervening earlier. He may not have been able to talk sense into the boy, gotten him to stop risking his life, but he may have been able to get Danny to be more cautious. To remember that, teenager or not, he was not invincible. Now….

It might be too late now.

The office had the closest phone. He'd inform the Fentons that he was taking Danny to the hospital, that they should meet him there. That he'd explain when they arrived. That he would do everything in his power to make sure that Danny was all right. That Danny would come through this.

" _Hello?"_

Jazz. Oh, he'd hoped that she wouldn't be the one to answer the phone. He'd been hoping to get Maddie. She, he felt, would be able to keep a more level head in this situation. When it came to Danny, Jazz had always been more prone to panic. "Jasmine, it's Mr. Lancer," he said slowly. "It's about your brother."

Silence for a second, then, _"Do you want me to get Mom? She and Dad are just in the lab."_

"That won't be necessary, Miss Fenton. Just…. Please inform them that I am taking Danny to the hospital. I'd like them to meet me there."

" _The hospital?"_ Jazz squeaked. _"What happened?"_

"I'll explain what I know when I see you. Please, Jazz."

" _I…. Of course. I'll tell Mom and Dad. We'll be there."_

The line went dead, and Lancer hung up the phone. He dreaded having to make calls like that. It was not an aspect of the job he liked, but this was a school and, moreover, it was a school which saw near-daily ghost attacks. Injuries were to be expected.

Injuries beyond their capabilities at the nurse's office, however….

Mr. Lancer sighed. If he had been able to convince Danny to open up to him earlier today, he might have been able to prevent this. Point out that there were other able ghost hunters. That there was no need for his show of anonymous heroism. That his parents would be overjoyed that he was taking an interest in their work and that he shouldn't be doing this prior to proper tutoring with them. That he didn't need to do this to prove his worth.

"I'm going to take you to the hospital now, Danny," Lancer said as he entered the classroom. "Just try to—" He broke off, the rest of his sentence— _keep pressure on your wounds_ —dying on his lips as he realized the irrelevance of the reminder.

Danny Fenton was gone.

All that remained of him now was a staggered trail of blood, a smear of red across a few of the desks, and the slowly drying stain on the doorframe.


	4. Chapter 4

Danny had his shirt balled up and pressed to his side. The bleeding had slowed now but hadn't yet stopped. Every once in a while, he still had to wipe his forehead before the blood dribbled down into his eyes. He was in a horrible amount of pain, but as good as Mr. Lancer's intentions were, Danny knew he couldn't allow the teacher to take him to the hospital.

 _Don't touch anything_. _Don't leave a trail_. _Don't let him be able to follow you_.

Not that being careful would help him much anyway. Lancer probably knew where he was going.

Danny slowly made his way to his locker, staggering a bit but managing to avoid crashing into the walls on his way. When he finally got there, bloodied fingers reached for the lock. Carefully, he spun it to clear it and shakily started to input the combination. He would have appreciated having intangibility now, but if Phantom couldn't access his abilities, Fenton certainly couldn't.

Danny tugged on the lock, but it wouldn't give. Stupid finicky school locks…. He started again, painfully aware that the longer he was here, the more likely it was that Lancer would catch him.

 _I have to get out of here_.

The lock clicked open. He fumbled a bit, removing it and then swinging the door wide. His cell phone was in his backpack. That was all he needed. A blind grab and a sharp tug later and the backpack was at his feet. Locker closed, lock replaced. Backpack over his shoulder, away from his sore side. Now to find a better hiding spot.

Janitor's closet? Risky at this time of day. Basement access would be locked. So would supply closets. Same with most classrooms, unless they were being used for some extracurricular activity or—as in the case of the lab—had been left open for students to pick up assignments and would be locked when the teacher left to go home. Library, maybe, except he wouldn't be able to get in without anyone seeing him, and he'd have to cross Lancer's path anyway.

Would the cafeteria be locked if there was a chance it still needed to be cleaned?

With his luck today, he probably shouldn't risk it.

He gave the gym a wide berth—there was basketball or volleyball or some sort of practice in there—and, hoping it wasn't too obvious a spot, opted for the stairs. Worst case scenario, he ended up on the roof, but he doubted Lancer would look past the first flight of stairs. So long as he didn't leave a trail, Mr. Lancer wouldn't know where he'd gone.

Hopefully.

Danny made it around the first corner and collapsed on the stairs, happy to be hidden from the door he'd come through. He refused to give in to the spots that were dancing in his vision this time. He couldn't stay here for long. This was just a rest stop. A chance to make a phone call and a plan.

Jazz's number was the first one on his fingertips. She had a car. She could come pick him up. And it wasn't unusual for her to be around the school, anyway. Especially when he had detention. If that detention came with his parents grounding him, she was usually sent to pick him up to make sure he didn't drag his feet coming home with his friends.

That might make her the obvious choice, but he was willing to risk it right now.

The phone rang twice before Jazz answered. _"Hello?"_

She hadn't checked the caller ID. "Hey, Jazz."

"Danny _?"_ The incredulity in the voice was evident, but Jazz managed to keep relatively quiet. _"What happened? Mr. Lancer said—"_

"Long story. Come pick me up?"

There was a pause. _"I can't. I'm strapped into the Assault Vehicle with Mom and Dad. We're heading to the hospital."_

Oh. Great. "Lancer knows," Danny said slowly. Then, to override Jazz's reaction, he continued, "Maybe phone Sam and Tuck for me? Please?" After a second or so of silence, he added, "East stairs. I'm on the east stairs."

" _Danny…."_

"Please, Jazz. I need help." He might not normally make that admission, especially to Jazz, but this time was different. This time, it was painfully true.

Emphasis, unfortunately, on the 'painfully'.

" _Hang on, little brother. I'll do what I can."_

"Hurry." The phone slipped down, and Danny hung up. He just…. He'd been in pain before. He'd been in constant pain before. But this…. This was different. More tiring, maybe. Not the same tiredness that resulted from his healing powers sapping his energy. Just…tiredness and pain and the constant throbbing, the pounding in his head that made it hard to even hear Jazz on the phone.

He felt like he'd been thrown through a wall. Then again, he had. This time was just…a heck of a lot worse than it normally was. Than it should be. Even if his healing powers hadn't completely given out on him, even if they were the reason he'd made it as far as he had, they were definitely significantly reduced.

If this is what Valerie was going to be shooting him with from now on, he couldn't afford to get hit again.

Suddenly the torture of school dodge ball was looking like excellent—and very necessary—practice.

If only this were only a normal day. If it were, tomorrow he could be pummelled in dodge ball by Dash, Kwan, and the other jocks. Tetslaff would threaten to fail him if he didn't pull his socks up, grit his teeth, and play the game. And then, when he got off the bench, he could avoid a few balls, just enough to appease Tetslaff, and then let himself get hit again. And Dash would gloat all the way to math, where Mr. Falluca would hand out the latest quizzes. Since both he and Dash would inevitably have failed, Danny could look forward to seeing the inside of his locker come the next break….

The Box Ghost would show up at some point. More than once, if Danny let him out of the thermos early enough. Probably Skulker, too. Maybe a few others. It depended on the day. He'd have to run out of class, at any rate. He might get detention, fail a surprise pop quiz, or completely blank when asked a question he should know the answer to. He'd joke with Sam and Tucker, avoid the A-listers, take a fall when he had to, and maybe exchange a word or two with Valerie so that he didn't talk with her more when she was shooting at him than when she wasn't.

But because he hadn't managed to dodge this time, because Val's revenge-fuelled shot had been true, tomorrow wasn't going to be a normal day.

"Please hurry, Jazz," Danny whispered, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes. "Please."

* * *

Mr. Lancer frowned as he rubbed a few flakes of dried blood off of Danny's school lock. Gently, he pushed the lock closed. There was no sense in checking the boy's locker for his parents' weapons; he'd already been here to clear them out. He knew how hard Jack and Maddie had pushed for their children to be allowed to carry their inventions to the school, what with all the ghost attacks, but an ectogun was still a gun in the eyes of the school board. The most Danny and Jazz were allowed to have was a Fenton Thermos or that—what was it? Oh, yes—Spectre Deflector.

But he couldn't say he was really surprised to learn that Danny was bending the rules.

Lancer scanned the hallway for a sign of which way Danny had gone. He came up with nothing; it was as if Danny had been able to run off and vanish into thin air. But even in Amity Park, ghostly abilities were limited to ghosts (though he could remember one brief, though notable, exception to that rule). He'd find the boy somewhere. In his condition, he couldn't have gotten far.

What Lancer couldn't understand was why Danny would run in the first place. He wouldn't have been able to keep injuries that severe from his parents. Minor ones, yes. Cuts, bruises…. Danny was clumsy. The number of broken beakers and glassware in general was a prime example of that. The ghosts had probably viewed him as little more than a pest if he'd gotten away relatively unscathed for so long.

Lancer was on his second (and more thorough) search of the school when he heard it. Hushed voices that carried through the silent halls. He was well away from the gym, the band room, and the drama room. Any remaining extracurricular activities were over by now, given that most were meetings of one group or another. The Casper High Students Association. Students Against Drunk Driving. The environmental committee. What else met on Thursdays? It wasn't the grad committee, was it?

He couldn't keep track of these things. But they didn't matter. He'd been starting to doubt that Danny was still in the school until he heard the familiar voices of Sam and Tucker. Quite possibly, they were the only ones who knew of Danny's dangerous undertaking.

"Stop being so squeamish and grab his feet, Tucker! We have to get him out of here."

He'd never thought to check the stairs. Other floors, yes. But not every access. He was getting too old to be chasing kids around.

Besides, he never had been very good at hide and seek.

The shuffling stopped the minute the door to the stairwell squeaked open. He couldn't see anyone, but if they were close enough to hear from the hall….

Half a flight of stairs brought Sam, Tucker, and Danny into sight, Danny hanging limply between his two friends. "It's, uh, not what it looks like, Mr. Lancer," Sam said immediately. From the pale look on Tucker's face, Lancer figured she would be doing all the talking. Even holding Danny's feet looked like it might be too much for Tucker. Since the boy, to his knowledge, had survived his biology class dissections, Lancer could only assume that it was the impending visit to the doctor (private, he suspected, if Miss Manson was pulling the strings) with Danny. Tucker's strict avoidance of the school nurse's office hadn't gone unnoticed by the teachers.

Lancer raised an eyebrow. "Then what, pray tell, does it look like, Miss Manson?" If she had a good excuse as to why she and Tucker were carrying an unconscious and obviously injured Danny, he might just have to treat it as an extra credit fiction assignment.

Sam bit her lip, one shoulder moving slightly to shift the strap of the backpack she carried. Likely Mr. Fenton's, given that it wasn't the spider one he'd often seen her with. "Well, um, Tucker and I were coming to meet up with Danny after his detention. He—"

"Never showed up," Lancer cut in dryly.

"There was a, uh, ghost attack," Sam said quickly. She had probably seen the damage to the school and, if she'd been helping Danny keep his secret, no doubt knew that the best lies contained pieces of the truth. "Despite what his parents do, Danny's terrified of ghosts." Perhaps sensing his scepticism, Sam continued, "Danny kind of got caught in the middle of it. He was running away and tripped or something and must have knocked himself out. When we realized he was missing, Tucker used his PDA to track his cell."

Fiction indeed. He sighed. "I know the truth, Miss Manson."

The look she gave him clearly told him she didn't think so, but a split second later she forced a smile on her face. "Okay, then. We're just going to take Danny to the hospital. Don't worry about him. He'll be fine."

"I'm sure he will be. I'll take it from here, Miss Manson. I've already informed Danny's parents that I'm taking him in."

Tucker flinched, but Sam just kept the forced smile on her face. "We'll carry him to your car."

It would save his back, and he'd be grateful for it if he wasn't convinced they'd try to bolt and take their best friend with them. "I'm not in the mood for games," Lancer said quietly. "I know you two are loyal to Danny, but I've figured out his big secret. You don't need to try to protect him. We want the same thing."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "If you know Danny's secret, then you know why we can't take him to the hospital."

Lancer's eyebrows climbed. "That's taking things a bit too far, don't you think?"

"Look at him," Sam hissed. "Mr. Lancer, please. For Danny's sake, let us go. We can get him the help he needs."

"That's what I intend to do," Lancer pointed out.

"But you can't." The finality in the girl's voice was astounding, but Miss Manson had always been able to stand her ground. "We can."

"You're fourteen," Lancer pointed out, "and while we're arguing, Danny's condition isn't improving. Let me handle this, Miss Manson."

Sam glowered at him. "I might be fourteen," she said, "but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. Back me up here, Tucker."

Tucker swallowed. "She's right," he managed.

"I understand your concern," Lancer said, "but I can't let this continue. Let me take Mr. Fenton."

Tucker shot a nervous glance over his shoulder, but Sam was the one who spoke. "Fine," she bit out, her voice as hard as her face. "But if you really cared about him, Mr. Lancer, you would've let us take him. Since you won't, just…don't take him to the hospital." Very carefully, she and Tucker put Danny down, and then they walked past him, down the stairs and out the door.

He wasn't foolish enough to think that he was rid of them—if they felt this strongly about Danny not turning up at the hospital, they'd be doing everything they could to stop him from getting there—but he just couldn't fathom their stubbornness on this issue. Danny may have wanted to keep his ghost hunting a secret, but he'd been hurt beyond anything that could be fixed up with a simple first aid kit. He needed to see a doctor. It was as simple as that.

And since Mr. Fenton hadn't been roused by the commotion, Lancer could only think the worst.

Lancer carefully picked the boy up, surprised that he was lighter than he'd been expecting but grateful for it. He'd already locked up everything that was his responsibility, so he went straight for his car. He'd half expected to find a tire or two punctured, but nothing was amiss on the outside and it ran perfectly fine.

There was no reason not to take Mr. Fenton to the hospital. Yet on the way there, Lancer had to fight against the urge to just drive home with the boy and treat him as best he could himself. It was a ludicrous notion. He wasn't a doctor. He had little experience beyond minor cuts and scrapes. But something about Sam's and Tucker's fierce determination to keep Danny from the hospital made him wonder if he truly was doing what was best for the boy.

He'd compromise, Lancer decided as he took Danny into emergency. He'd just say the boy had been hurt in the most recent ghost attack. He wouldn't breathe a word about Danny's defence of Phantom. His injuries were an unfortunate accident. Nothing more.

"Danny!" The cry was Jazz's, and the Fentons had soon surrounded Lancer. At Jazz's insistence, he placed Danny on one of the seats and she stayed with him while he, Jack, and Maddie took care of everything else. But when they were through with the paperwork, when Danny was to be assessed by the triage nurse, both he and Jazz were gone.

Sam and Tucker, Mr. Lancer realized at that moment, were not the only ones who knew Danny's secret.

But for Jazz, of all people, to try to protect it when logic stated that Danny would be better off if he just admitted to ghost hunting…. It didn't add up. Jazz was clever. Keeping Danny's hobby a secret when it put his life in danger wasn't something Lancer would have expected her to do.

He felt like he'd skipped a page in a book. Missed a chapter, perhaps. Maybe read the sequel before the original. He understood some things, but there were others that completely baffled him. Whatever the reason, he didn't have the whole story, uncovered secret or not.

Things didn't make sense, and he didn't like that. He'd get to the bottom of this. He might not be able to talk Danny out of his hobby, but perhaps he could talk some sense into him so that he didn't always let school take the back seat. He would help the boy.

Lancer glanced at the empty seats in the waiting room previously occupied by the Fenton children. His jacket, in which he had wrapped the boy to cover his bare torso, was the only trace of their presence that they'd left behind.

He'd help Danny as much as he could…if he was given the chance. But unless Mr. Fenton stopped trying to run, he'd be on his own. For all that his friends and sister tried to help him, for all that _he_ wanted to help him, this was a journey only he could make. He'd started down this path. He'd have to see it through.


	5. Chapter 5

When Danny opened his eyes, he was staring into Jazz's anxious face. He tried to smile but, judging by the increase in worry in Jazz's expression, it came out more like a grimace. "Hey," he managed.

"This is bad, Danny," Jazz said bluntly. "You need help."

"Thanks for sugar coating it, Jazz." Another attempt at a smile. "Just what I needed."

"I'm serious," Jazz insisted. "You're not healing properly. Not like you usually do. Do you know how long it took me to wake you up? Danny, I don't even know how long you've been unconscious. I don't know how bad this is!"

"So you're worried because you don't know everything?"

"Quit that," Jazz snapped, losing her patience. "Stop pretending this isn't something we need to deal with. You were plenty worried yourself when you called me." Then, immediately, "Oh, I'm sorry, little brother, I just…."

"You're worried. I get it." Stupid throbbing head. Stupid aching everything. Jazz was right. He was better at pretending now than he had been on the phone. Probably because he had to look her in the eye, to see her reaction to every grimace and moan on his part. "So now what?"

"I don't know," Jazz admitted. "Maybe we should take you to Frostbite. You said he helped you before, right?"

"Yeah, but now's different." Danny shifted, trying to get into a more comfortable position. It didn't work. Every movement he made just started the shooting pains running through his body again. "This isn't a ghost thing."

Jazz frowned. "What happened?"

"Valerie. Some new weapon. Shorted out my powers."

"You can't go ghost?"

"Haven't tried," Danny answered. "Maybe. I didn't change back because of whatever I got hit with. I just…couldn't do anything."

"Then change," Jazz said. "If this problem started when you were Danny Phantom, maybe it's the only way to fix it."

"Don't hold your breath," Danny muttered, but at Jazz's look, he relented and tried to change.

It worked immediately, without any resistance at all, and like before, he had a glorious, all-too-fleeting millisecond that was free of pain.

And then it was back.

"Any better?" Jazz asked.

Danny shook his head, then winced as that made everything worse. Once the spots cleared, he tried not to move his head too much as he glanced around. "Where exactly are we?"

"Just around back. I didn't think I could carry you very far."

"Then we can't stay here," Danny said, gritting his teeth and preparing to push himself to his feet.

Jazz stopped him. "They're going to be looking for Danny Fenton, remember?" Her eyes strayed to his head before she asked, "Who patched you up? That wasn't a do-it-yourself job."

"Mr. Lancer," Danny said. He spoke slowly. Carefully. "I tried to get away and ended up changing back to Fenton. He found me and put two and two together."

"Are you sure he knows?"

Danny raised an eyebrow. "He hasn't come out and said 'Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom!' yet, but, yeah, I'd say he knows." He paused, closed his eyes for a moment and tried to will the pain away, and then continued, "When he found me bleeding, he told me I'd gotten hurt in a ghost fight. And don't say that's just a coincidence, Jazz, because there was no damage in that room. And he _did_ say that it wasn't hard to figure it out when he realized that the pieces were right in front of him."

Jazz bit her lip. "Then, maybe…." She trailed off. "I hate to suggest this, Danny, but maybe he could look after you for a bit." This was almost immediately followed by, "Oh, don't give me that look. It's not that terrible of a suggestion."

"You're the suggester. You don't get a vote."

"Just think about it, little brother. Sam and Tucker can't help you any more than I can, and—"

"Sam can get whatever she wants if she doesn't go through her parents."

Jazz pursed her lips. "There's a reason she doesn't flash her family wealth around, Danny, and it's more than just keeping off the social radar at school. You know that." A pause, where she waited to see if he was going to push it and keep arguing, and then, "And everyone else who doesn't know your secret, including Mom and Dad, are going to take you straight back to the hospital."

"So then I'll be Phantom instead of Fenton. It doesn't matter at this point, Jazz."

"It matters with how everyone else sees it," Jazz reminded him. "So unless you want to go to Vlad—"

"Not happening." That's probably what Vlad wanted. Aside from the new suit, he had supplied all of Val's weaponry.

"—then Mr. Lancer is your best choice. I hate to say it, but he's an adult, and his hands won't be tied like ours are. Besides," Jazz added, "he lives alone, right?"

"As far as I know," Danny agreed, albeit reluctantly. He wasn't keen on Jazz's idea. Sure, Mr. Lancer had helped him before. A make-up test here, an extra credit assignment there. He wasn't failing English because of him.

But asking him to hide him from everyone, _including his parents_ , which had to go against Lancer's instincts as a teacher when he knew his parents just wanted the best for him? Especially when he was doing something Lancer had to consider dangerous? Should he _really_ be asking him to help him out until he recovered? Maybe until whatever this was wore off and he got his powers back?

So Lancer had figured out his secret. Fine. Danny knew that was going to happen sooner or later with someone besides Jazz. But this went beyond that. Like Jazz had said, he was an adult. And adults had a different sense of what was necessary than kids did. Lancer had no idea how much Danny could handle. How much he'd had to deal with. Which was why he wasn't sure Lancer would keep his secret now that he knew it. If Lancer decided that it was in Danny's best interests to tell someone—namely his parents—what he'd been trying to keep from them….

It was a risk that Danny wasn't sure he should take.

"You just need to keep off the radar for a while, little brother," Jazz said quietly. "If anyone in their right mind finds Danny Fenton in the condition you're in, you're going to end up in the hospital. And if anyone finds Danny Phantom—"

"I'll be blasted to bits, dragged home so the town's ghost hunters, AKA Mom and Dad, can blast me to bits, or nearly smothered to death by a crazy fan."

Jazz sighed. "You're not crazy about the idea, Danny. I get it. But as good as Sam and Tucker are, they can't necessarily keep you from their parents. This isn't just for one night. You're not going to be fine tomorrow."

"You don't know that," Danny countered. "We don't know when I'll be back to normal."

"Exactly. _We don't know_. Which means we have to take precautions and expect the worst. You sound more lucid now than you did on the phone, but if you overdo it—"

Danny rolled his eyes. "Fine, Jazz. We'll do it your way. But if this backfires, I'm holding you responsible."

"Just look out for yourself," Jazz said. "Sam, Tucker, and I will work on getting things sorted out. Between Vlad and Valerie, we'll have a shot at figuring out what you got hit with and fixing it."

"Chances are, I'll be fine."

Jazz frowned. "It's good to be optimistic," she said, "but you need to be realistic, too."

Danny snorted. "Does my life _sound_ realistic to you? Jazz, life wasn't realistic for either of us long before the portal accident."

That earned him a small smile. "It's a good thing you never lose your sense of humour when things get tough. Just…hold on, all right? I'll make up some story. I'll cover for you. I'll do everything I can to make sure everything will be okay." Jazz gave him a careful hug before adding, "Just trust me."

"Even though this has 'bad idea' written all over it?"

Jazz ignored him and climbed to her feet. "Find Mr. Lancer. I'll take care of the rest." A pause, then, "And promise me you'll stay in ghost mode. If Mom and Dad so much as glimpse their son, you'll be in the hospital before we can do anything about it."

By all counts, he was lucky to have Jazz as a sister. But sometimes, like now, she got crazy ideas in her head. And half the time, times like now, he had no choice but to go along with it. He wasn't in any state to argue. "Promise," he said. He meant it, and Jazz knew it; he'd do everything he could to stay as Phantom.

Jazz slipped off, heading back inside, and Danny pushed himself to his feet. He'd stay as Phantom for a while; worst case scenario, his parents caught him. But Jazz had promised she'd keep them busy, presumably long enough for him to get to Lancer. She was his sister. She'd come through for him before, and she'd come through for him now. He just had to trust her.

"I hope you're right, Jazz," Danny muttered. But it was Jazz. She was a lot more likely to be right than he was.

But if she was wrong this time, he was really going to regret it.

* * *

For the life of him, Lancer wasn't sure what had happened. Jazz Fenton had turned up soon enough, claiming that she'd gone to the washroom. That Danny had asked her to get him some moist paper towel, that she hadn't expected him to bolt. But she readily admitted that he'd been wary, that he hadn't been happy with the idea of going to the hospital. That, to be perfectly honest, she wasn't entirely surprised to come back and find him gone.

Mr. and Mrs. Fenton believed her, of course. Though their son's behaviour was inexplicable to them, they would have no reason to think that Jazz was lying—or, at the very least, stretching the truth. They accepted the fact that Danny had run away and resolved to find out why once they found him.

Lancer accepted the fact that Danny had run away easily enough. But after years of listening to the half-baked excuses of his students, young Mr. Fenton's included, he was certain Jazz knew exactly where her missing brother was hiding. The fact that her lie was told unflinchingly and therefore so easily swallowed by her parents, however, told him that she knew much more than she was telling.

Considering Jack Fenton had pulled out a megaphone and started a very loud search on the hospital grounds while Maddie began searching places inside and Jazz played the concerned older sister, it likely wouldn't be too difficult for Danny to continue to avoid his parents, providing he stayed conscious. And if one of Phantom's allies had helped Danny escape….

This couldn't just be because Danny worked with Phantom and hunted ghosts. There _must_ be more to it. He wouldn't run from proper medical care if that were the only reason.

As Lancer started back out to the parking lot, Miss Manson's words floated through his mind once more: _"If you know Danny's secret, then you know why we can't take him to the hospital."_

What was he missing?

Danny himself had never put up an argument, exactly. After rather weakly denying the need for the hospital, he'd just run away. His friends had tried to spirit him away the first time, but his sister had succeeded the second time. Lancer had little doubt that Danny's friends had phoned Jazz to warn her, and he wouldn't be surprised to learn that they had somehow managed to get themselves here and pick Mr. Fenton up and take him away like they had originally intended. In hindsight, that made more sense than a ghost turning up to help. With the Fentons around, that would be too dangerous.

Things were dangerous enough as it was. Sam and Tucker might have Danny's backpack full of ghost hunting supplies stashed somewhere they thought safe, but that didn't erase what Danny had been doing.

Although…. That was perhaps what bothered him about this entire situation. For all that Mr. Fenton was following in his parents' footsteps, for all that he'd been trying to do so himself, it was curious that he hadn't been carrying around a ghost hunting weapon with him. Lancer admittedly hadn't checked Danny's pockets, but the FentonWorks inventions weren't particularly small, and the desks had no room for storage.

He could understand that Danny would not have had time to run for any weaponry and that he didn't carry everything with him lest he was caught, but was his belief in Phantom's goodness enough to make him try to fight a ghost with nothing more than his bare hands?

Lancer stopped for a moment, knowing his initial assumptions had to be wrong. It would have been beyond foolish for Danny to take on a ghost with nothing up his sleeve. Frowning slightly, Lancer tried to recall the inventory list of the various FentonWorks weapons Jack and Maddie had provided the school in the hopes that some would be approved for emergency use. Standard ectoguns, they'd said, could be provided to the teachers. Strong enough to pack a punch without being as unwieldy as weapons like the Fenton Bazooka. At the very least, they'd argued, the Fenton Lipstick was small, easy to store, easy to use, fairly inconspicuous, and still very effective.

That had to be it. The one thing Danny could carry without being caught. For all Lancer knew, he kept a spare in his pencil case. The main one could easily fit in his pocket, and it would be simple enough to pass it off to one of his friends or to hide it behind something if it came to that. The Fentons didn't skimp on safety when it came to their inventions; Danny could have been confident that it would not have gone off by mistake.

Of course, getting a better idea of what had happened should help him but wasn't. He still had no idea exactly what had happened with Danny—nor where he might have gone if Sam and Tucker weren't responsible for his disappearance, nor why he was so against the idea of seeing a proper doctor. Disinfectant and gauze and bandages could only get a person so far.

He'd promised to keep an eye out for Danny. Maddie had declined offers of anything more, saying their family could scour the ground for him themselves. Lancer, for his part, suspected that she had already contacted Sam and Tucker. They were, after all, the ones with whom Danny would logically seek sanctuary. While Danny might have been able to keep his other activities from them, his fierce friendship with Sam and Tucker was far from secret.

When had teaching gotten so complicated? He shouldn't need to second guess the actions of his students. There were certain things he'd expected that he would eventually run across in his teaching career. Each of those scenarios needed to be treated differently, as did each case within those scenarios, and he'd always been as prepared as he could be when it came to dealing with such sensitive issues. But this…. This was different. A situation that had to be unique to Amity Park, but one which mirrored pieces of things he'd seen before.

"Mr. Lancer?"

Lancer stopped, car keys in hand as he reached for the driver's door. As he stood there, Danny Phantom came into view, rising from the other side of the car. How the boy had known which one was his was anyone's guess. But if the slight quaver in Phantom's voice wasn't enough to assess his condition, the presence of the now haphazard bandage on his head was more than enough to let Lancer know that Phantom was still as powerless as he'd been at the school.

And, consequently, still as hurt.

"How did you get away?" Lancer asked. How he'd gotten here was simple enough; whatever ghost had captured him had clearly dropped him here. More likely than not, the ghost had caught wind of the Fentons being here for their son. In theory, it would be easy for them to destroy Phantom when he was powerless.

And if the Fentons got rid of Phantom, the rest of the ghosts would stand a better chance of getting a foothold in Amity Park.

"I had some help," Phantom admitted. "As you probably guessed. Look, can I, uh, ask for a really big favour?"

"Of course." The words were out of his mouth before he realized that Danny Phantom, the town's hero, was asking _him_ , a humble teacher, for help.

Phantom glanced over his shoulder. "Hide me. Preferably quickly."

Ah. He should have guessed. Phantom had learned that the Fentons were here—or, at the very least, anticipated that they would be if he'd seen the condition his foe had left young Danny in—and did not wish to face the very real possibility of being wiped from existence.

"Door's open," Lancer said quietly. Phantom lost no time in scrambling inside the car and sinking down in the seat, out of view from the windows. Lancer got in and took a brief moment to study him. He looked weaker than before. More tired, perhaps. But as far as he could tell, Phantom's last ghost encounter hadn't left him with any more injuries.

Danny's actions hadn't been in vain, at least.

"I've no place to take you but home," Lancer admitted slowly, "and I don't know how much I can do for you. Perhaps if I asked Mr. and Mrs. Fenton—"

"They haven't really invented anything to heal ghosts, and the closest thing to it won't work in this case, anyway," Phantom cut in swiftly. "I just…. I dunno what I need. Rest, I think. The others can handle the ghost attacks for a little while."

He had to mean the other ghost hunters in town. The Fentons, the Red Huntress—humans, not ghosts. Lancer wasn't sure if he could remember ever seeing any other ghost besides Phantom fighting off invading ghosts. There must have been others the time the town had been sucked into the Ghost Zone—the sheer volume of fleeing ghosts meant many had not been on the side of the one Phantom had fought against—but he couldn't remember any faces, let alone names. His priorities at the time hadn't been such that he'd had ample opportunity to watch a ghost fight.

Lancer considered telling Phantom that the Fentons intended to look for their son but saw no point; if Phantom happened to know where Danny had disappeared to, Lancer doubted he would say, and he highly doubted the Fentons would let a ghost go free without at least attempting to shoot at it and discover whether it knew anything about Danny's disappearance. Though preoccupied with the more pressing concern of their son's safety, Jack and Maddie wouldn't ignore the safety of the town.

On the drive home, Lancer warred with his conscience. He wasn't sure if he was doing the right thing. He'd done as much first aid on Phantom as he could, but with wounds like his, they wouldn't be enough. The boy— _ghost_ —probably needed stitches since he wasn't healing as quickly as normal. And medicine was far from Lancer's area of expertise, his knowledge of ghosts not much better. If Phantom wasn't already a ghost, Lancer would worry that his ignorance would do more harm than good.

Ghosts were resilient. He knew that. But looking at Phantom now, and remembering how much spilt ectoplasm he'd seen earlier, he had to wonder again if resilience and determination alone would be enough.

" _I'm not healing."_

Ghosts couldn't die again, surely. But everyone in Amity Park had heard Jack Fenton threaten to tear apart ghosts molecule by molecule—Phantom included—and it was common knowledge that ghosts could be destroyed. So if they were injured beyond repair, did they just…vanish? Degenerate into pure ectoplasm? Burst apart or melt or evaporate or some such thing once the energy field, the last bit of whatever it was that gave them form, was too weak to hold them together?

He didn't want to be indirectly responsible for the disappearance of Amity Park's infamous ghost hero.

Lancer pulled up in front of his house and looked over at Phantom, intending to ask him what he needed besides a safe place to rest and recover his energy. But Phantom, to his surprise, was already asleep, his soft snore audible now that the car was off. He looked…vulnerable. More than that, he looked _human_. Lancer wasn't sure whether it was the fact that Phantom was actually asleep or because he was breathing, but there was no denying that he was doing both.

Admittedly, he'd never really thought about it too much, but it didn't seem intuitive.

He could think about that later. He'd just get Phantom inside, get him settled on the couch or in the spare bed, and try to make things comfortable. Maybe show him the miniature train set he had, just to keep his mind off of his troubles. If Phantom was willing, Lancer may be able to learn a few lessons about ghosts from an instructor even more qualified than the Fentons.

Lancer reached over to gently shake Phantom awake. He'd be less disoriented if he walked into the house himself than if he woke in a strange room. "Phantom," Lancer called softly, "we're here."

An unintelligible mumble was his response.

"We're here," Lancer repeated, giving the boy a slightly more vigorous shake. He still had no success, so he tried, "Danny?"

Phantom jerked and sat up. His first name clearly penetrated deeper into his consciousness than his last name. Lancer wondered if he should employ the tactic with his students more often. At the moment, he only had to resort to a first name basis with Mr. Fenton, who was prone to sleeping through anything else.

"Sorry, Mr. Lancer," Phantom mumbled, like his students so often did when he caught them trying to snooze through Shakespeare. His eyes weren't quite open when he added, "Can you repeat the question?"

For a split second, Lancer didn't hear Danny Phantom's voice ask that question. He heard Danny _Fenton_ 's. It was the same thing Mr. Fenton muttered every time Lancer had to wake him up in class, usually because he would ask a question, notice that Danny was not paying attention, and call him out. Now that he thought about it, the similarity between the two Dannys was striking.

" _If you know Danny's secret, then you know why we can't take him to the hospital."_

 _Brave New World_ , there was more to this than he'd thought.


	6. Chapter 6

If Lancer hadn't already figured out his secret, Danny knew he would've blown it the minute the words were out of his mouth. He'd just…. He'd spoken before he was fully awake and conscious of where he was. He'd heard Lancer calling his name and responded the way he always did.

Unfortunately, Phantom wasn't supposed to do the same thing as Fenton.

And from the look on Lancer's face, he was still thinking that. Danny supposed there was a difference between knowing the truth and accepting it. Jazz hadn't had that problem. What did they say, seeing is believing? She'd had the truth offered up to her with a huge heaping of proof. Scientific-minded as she could be, she probably didn't even need all her observations of his strange behaviour she'd garnered over the previous months to see the truth for what it was.

"Sorry," Danny muttered. "I wasn't thinking." He reached to undo his seat belt until he remembered that he'd never done it up. That was rare for him—he was used to his dad driving, after all—but then again, he'd been intending to hide from his parents and everyone else in the town who didn't know his secret and consequently had never sat up in the seat. Still, he was kind of surprised Lancer had let him get away with it. Adults usually harped on that sort of thing. And for good reason, he supposed, when people like Jack Fenton were on the road.

Lancer tactfully ignored Danny's lapse, instead saying, "We're here."

And he thought Tucker had a thing for stating the obvious.

"It's, um, nice," Danny said when they were inside the small house. "Quiet, and, uh…." His eyes fell on a wall that was nearly lined with bookshelves. "Library-like," he added lamely. Of all the stupid things to say….

Lancer smiled. "Just make yourself comfortable, Phantom."

Danny sat down in a chair by the fireplace. "You can call me Danny if you want," he said, more for the sake of saying something than anything else. "You already know it's my name." Then, quickly, "I mean, it doesn't matter. I'm used to being called Phantom. I picked it, after all. It's loads better than Inviso-Bill."

Lancer chuckled. "I'd have to agree with you there, but I think I'll stick with Phantom if you don't mind. It's hard to break the habit."

"It helps to keep things straight," Danny allowed, "between Fenton and Phantom." He'd had to differentiate his two sides like that himself a bunch of times.

The sounds from the kitchen stopped abruptly, and then Lancer said slowly, "This has been going on for a long time, hasn't it?"

"Feels like a lifetime," Danny admitted.

"Doesn't anyone suspect anything?"

Well, it wasn't much of a secret any longer, so there was no harm in filling in a few blanks. "Sam and Tucker knew right from the start, and Jazz figured it out after." Then, since Lancer could probably guess this anyway and might think the worst, Danny added, "They help sometimes, but, honest, Mr. Lancer, I do my best to make sure none of them are in any position to get hurt." There was definitely no need to mention Vlad; he was a special case, after all.

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," Lancer murmured. "Mr. and Mrs. Fenton have no idea, then?"

"I'm pretty sure I'd know," Danny said.

"Even though this has been going on right under their noses?"

"They've never said anything or given any indication that they knew. I mean, Jazz never noticed anything, and she'd be the one to notice."

Lancer joined him in the living room then, carrying what looked suspiciously like a teapot and two cups. He offered one to Danny, who stared at it for a moment, thinking about how much he really didn't like tea and wondering if he could refuse. Lancer obviously thought he was unenthusiastic for reasons other than taste, since he asked hesitantly, "Can't you drink?"

"I can drink," Danny said, reluctantly taking the proffered cup. He knew the question wasn't as random as it seemed. Lancer had only ever seen Phantom when he was fighting other ghosts, and his accurate knowledge of ghosts in general was probably dubious at best; it wasn't a stretch that he'd wonder if Danny had any limitations in this form. "I mean, all the ghosts can drink and eat if they want to even if they normally don't. All the ones I've met, anyway. I'm no different." Not in that way, anyway.

Lancer laughed, finally realizing what Danny meant. "You want coffee, then? Or something cold?"

"I'm not thirsty," Danny said, putting his cup onto the end table and carefully avoiding the book Mr. Lancer had been reading. The last thing he wanted to do was break something, especially since intangibility didn't get rid of the mess when everything was inside. Besides, saying he didn't feel great was an understatement. The thought of drinking anything made him feel kind of nauseous. The thought of food just made that feeling worse, so thank goodness Lancer hadn't suggested that.

"You should still drink. You need to keep hydrated. You've lost a lot of, ah, ectoplasm."

"I don't think I can stomach anything right now."

"I'll get you some ginger ale, then," Lancer said, ignoring Danny's protests as he returned to the kitchen. He came back with a small bottle. "Sip it slowly."

Danny obediently took a sip. "Thanks. I just…."

"You're rattled," Lancer concluded. "Hence the tea. It always calms me. I thought it might do the same for you."

Danny bit his lip. "You need to keep this a secret, Mr. Lancer. You know that, right? You can't tell anyone."

"I'm sure—"

"Not anyone," Danny repeated urgently.

Lancer, who had already poured himself a cup of tea, took a sip, lowered his cup, and looked levelly at Danny. "I've obligations," he said slowly.

"I know, but, please, overlook them just this once. I swear, I can handle this. I have so far."

Danny couldn't really read Lancer's expression, but he had the sinking feeling that he was fighting a losing battle. "I'd like to," Lancer said, in a tone that adults everywhere used when they were about to deny children something, which pretty much cemented Danny's sinking feeling, "but I can't. Not when lives are in danger."

Crud. He knew he should've asked Jazz what to do. He knew this was going to happen. "I already said—"

Lancer shook his head. "I'm sorry, Phantom. But today just made that very clear to me, even if I never realized it before. Allowing this to continue is dangerous."

Crud. He needed to figure out how to get Lancer to change his mind. Preferably, sooner rather than later. But his head was pounding. Holding a civil conversation was a lot harder than it looked on the surface. But despite what he'd told Lancer earlier, he knew his healing abilities couldn't have completely abandoned him. He'd been thrown through a wall, after all; this wouldn't be all that was wrong with him if he wasn't healing on some level. It was almost like his powers were just suppressed, except for the fact that he had no trouble staying in ghost mode.

Danny sighed. He'd have to think this over later. "Just don't do anything yet, okay? Please?"

Lancer looked at him for a long moment, and Danny feared he was going to deny that request. Then, finally, "All right. We'll discuss this later. You should try to rest. If you go down the hall, you'll find a guest bedroom opposite the washroom. Bed's made. If you need anything, I'll be out here marking. Just shout or come find me."

"Thank you," Danny said, slowly getting to his feet. "I really appreciate this." He knew as well as anyone how easy it would've been for Lancer to hand him straight over to his parents. He didn't look forward to the time he had to make that explanation, but he hoped they'd listen rather than shoot him on sight, the moment he changed into Phantom….

He probably wouldn't be that lucky. It was practically a reflex for them to shoot at a ghost the minute one came into sight. Heck, his dad kept at least one ectogun nearby when he showered, and both their jumpsuits were equipped with numerous anti-ghost tech. He wouldn't be able to get within shouting distance before they started shooting, and there was no way that he was going to let Lancer drop something like this on them over the phone. He needed to be there, to tell them himself. To prove to them that it was true. To see their reaction.

Oh, man, he had to talk Mr. Lancer out of this.

Somehow.

There had to be a way.

Right?

* * *

Lancer watched as Phantom wandered off to the guest room, frowning slightly. He was worried about the ghost's condition, but he didn't seem to be getting any worse. And of the two people he'd seen injured today, Phantom seemed to be taking things better than Danny. Poor Mr. Fenton had looked much worse, for all that they seemed to have similar injuries on the surface.

Lancer took another swallow of tea, but it was doing nothing to settle his nerves tonight. Truth be told, he was more worried about Danny than Phantom. He'd seen Phantom bounce back from too many things to really think that this would be his undoing, particularly now that he seemed marginally better than before. The rest in the car, if Lancer was to guess, had done him some good. As far as he knew, it had begun to restore Phantom's ability to heal quickly.

But Danny had no such abilities, and he'd run from the best place that he could've gotten treatment.

It wasn't just ghost hunting. Lancer knew that now. It simply couldn't be as simple as that. Danny Fenton didn't just hunt ghosts, following blindly in his parents' footsteps. No, he had guidance—and from a very unlikely source. One of which his parents most certainly would not approve.

There really was no other explanation. It accounted for a number of things. Why Danny always disappeared when ghosts turned up, particularly when Phantom was later to be seen fighting those very ghosts. How Phantom was able to get his hands on a variety of Fenton inventions and evade them so cleverly at the same time. How Danny knew, even when he was supposed to be paying attention in class—even when he was almost asleep in class—when a ghost was going to turn up.

It was the last point which really seemed to prove that his theory was truth. While Lancer didn't have the keenest ears, he had never heard any beeping or anything that would have audibly alerted Danny to the presence of ghosts. He had never seen any other kids reacting, either. Sure, Sam and Tucker sometimes exchanged glances, but that was always _after_ Danny reacted to whatever tipped him off to the presence of ghosts. It was almost like he had a sixth sense.

He didn't, of course. He just had Phantom.

It was clever, really. Danny could stick to the shadows and do the ground work, remaining practically invisible by pretending never to leave the sidelines. He could distract his parents so Phantom never got caught or release him if the unthinkable happened. He could provide backup if needed and have a ready supply of Fenton Thermoses on hand. With the Ghost Portal in the basement of his house, he could take the thermos from Phantom and get rid of the ghosts for him.

This work took its toll on him, of course. Phantom would be calling on him at all hours of the night. Homework would remain unfinished. Tests would never be studied for. Classes would be skipped. But if Danny was helping Phantom, Phantom helped Danny in return. Lancer had no idea how else the boy would be able to slip away from him so easily in detention.

It wasn't until something like this happened that Lancer realized he'd never given any thought as to where Phantom went when he wasn't fighting a ghost. He'd known, on some level, that it wasn't the Ghost Zone; Phantom wouldn't be in any position to protect Amity Park from other ghosts if he weren't there in the first place. He'd just taken it for granted that Phantom constantly patrolled the town, dealing with threats as soon as he came across them.

Lancer was now certain that that wasn't the case.

On one hand, it made sense. Phantom was young, by both ghost and human standards, given his familiarity with both Amity Park and modern technology. And, being so young, he'd never had the chance to grow up. He'd never gotten to be whatever he'd dreamed of being as a child. Never finished school. No diploma, no driver's licence, no other markers or milestones that were usually passed as people lived out their lives.

From that perspective, it was much less of a shock to find that he was trying to live vicariously through someone else. It would explain his unintentional parroting of Mr. Fenton in the car. If Phantom, on some level, still had a desire to learn, to satisfy a thirst for knowledge, then sitting in on a few classes might seem to be a logical way to do it. If he did so often enough….

Perhaps Casper High wasn't a popular place for ghosts to attack solely because it was a place reliably filled with people.

And if Phantom and Danny had become friends, if they spent so much time working together, well…. He had little doubt that Danny's parents wouldn't become curious about his extracurricular activities now that they'd seen him in that state. If it was the direct result of helping a ghost—and not just any ghost, but Phantom—then he could see why Sam and Tucker wouldn't want Mr. and Mrs. Fenton to find out. They strove to protect Danny, even by keeping secrets from his parents that endangered Danny's life. He was surprised Jazz had ever agreed to keep quiet about it.

And now Phantom wanted him to do the same.

" _You need to keep this a secret, Mr. Lancer. You can't tell anyone."_

Surely Phantom spent enough time protecting lives to realize when one was in danger? Danny couldn't keep this up. It was too dangerous.

Oh, he could imagine the arguments to that. No one was forcing him into anything; it was wholly Danny's choice. Considering his parents' profession, he was the best one for the job. Almost everything involved a certain amount of risk, and if this just happened to be riskier than most, then Danny clearly accepted that. He accepted the risks, the challenges of what he was doing. And he'd been doing it and doing it well for a long time now. He was probably convinced that the good he was doing was well worth it.

But Danny, Lancer was fairly sure, still had the mentality of being invincible that all teenagers seemed to share. This would be a wake-up call, yes, but Lancer wasn't sure if it would be enough of one to convince Danny that something like this could very well happen again, even if he took a few more precautions. And Lancer simply couldn't stand by and allow young Mr. Fenton to continue to put himself in danger.

Lancer sighed and put his tea aside. He'd get nothing done if he puzzled over Danny's actions all night. He could heat up some leftover soup for his supper and then start his marking. His briefcase should be by the….

His briefcase. He'd never grabbed his briefcase.

He'd left that at the school. Hadn't even put all his papers back inside. They had suddenly seemed much less important when faced first with an injured ghost and then an injured human.

There was nothing for it. He'd have to go get it. He might have locked the room when he'd walked by it during his first search of the school for Danny, though he'd been sorely tempted not to bother because of the damaged wall, but he'd clean forgotten to gather his work together.

He'd leave a note, in case Phantom needed something, but he'd easily be back in half an hour. Surely the ghost would be all right for that short of time. Tomorrow was Friday, but Lancer had already decided to call in sick. Take a personal day, rather. Plead a family emergency or the need to recover from the latest attack, which could easily have left him grievously injured if not dead. Besides, at the rate Phantom was recovering, he'd still be laid up, and Lancer didn't want to leave him to fend for himself.

Moreover, they needed to talk. If Phantom was as close to Danny Fenton as Lancer suspected, there was always the possibility that the ghost did know where his defender had gone, even if Lancer hadn't thought so at first. And if the Fentons hadn't found Danny's hiding place by tomorrow….

After placing the note for Phantom on the coffee table, Lancer grabbed his coat and his keys and headed out the door. He wouldn't be long.

* * *

Thankfully, Lancer made it to the school and back without incident. The note he'd left was undisturbed, so he went to check on Phantom to see if he was…. Well, he was going to see if the ghost was asleep. Resting, at any rate.

Lancer approached Phantom's room and raised his hand to knock. Before he could, he heard Phantom's exasperated voice say, "For the last time, I'm fine."

Lancer froze, eyes wide, hand still poised before the door. While he did not profess to be an expert on Phantom or on ghosts, he hadn't anticipated his houseguest to be psychic.

"Okay, okay. You win. I'm _not_ fine. But I'm not as bad as I could be. I'm feeling better than I was at the hospital."

Lancer almost burst out laughing as he realized that Phantom, of all people, was on the phone. Not wanting to eavesdrop, he went back to the kitchen to warm up some supper before getting down to marking. Phantom had already admitted to having other friends who helped him; confirmation of that shouldn't be so surprising.

Still, he was curious. He'd be a fool to deny that. He'd seen enough of Phantom's fights to know that, ghost or not, the boy got into more than his fair share of scrapes. Phantom's list of friends had been short, however. Considering all they needed to do—not the least of which was patching him up or getting him things when he needed them—Lancer had to wonder if Phantom's list had been complete.

Since Danny Fenton was involved, it was no surprise that Miss Manson and Mr. Foley helped as well. Mr. Fenton was the first to disappear when a ghost attacked, but half the time, his friends were on his heels. Furthermore, it made sense that Miss Fenton had discovered their ruse, though he was surprised that she hadn't put a stop to it. He hadn't thought she'd ever stand for her brother to be in so much danger when she of all people would know a ghost's protection could only extend so far.

Come to think of it, Miss Gray may be involved as well, for all that Phantom hadn't mentioned her. He'd lost track of her more than once, and she, like Mr. Fenton, had more tardies on her record of late.

Then again, Valerie had never been very supportive whenever Phantom's name came up in class. While it could be a cover, she often spoke against him with such conviction and, on occasion, venom, that Lancer could believe she wasn't part of Phantom's secret group of helpers after all. It seemed to go beyond playing the devil's advocate; she seemed as convinced of Phantom's evil as Mr. and Mrs. Fenton themselves.

Lancer sighed. He'd start to piece the puzzle together tomorrow, if Phantom was feeling up to talking. With a night's rest behind him, the infamous ghost boy of Amity Park may very well be able to see Lancer's side of things and admit that the balance had shifted with the attack on Danny Fenton. As big-hearted and well-meaning, skilled and quite possibly stealthy as Mr. Fenton had become, his association with Phantom put him in danger, and children were still children, however adult they acted.


	7. Chapter 7

Danny had never intended to fall asleep.

Keep his eyes closed, yes. Doze, probably. Sleep about twelve hours? Definitely not.

He wasn't complaining, per se—he couldn't remember the last time he'd slept that long—but he wasn't wholly happy about it, either.

He still couldn't do anything in ghost mode. He could think straight now and turning his head didn't spend the world spinning, but basic powers were still a no-go. While his injuries looked considerably better, his various scrapes and scratches and bruises were glaringly present.

Besides that, he still had a goose egg on his head, and his side was weeping a bit even now. He'd even managed to get some ectoplasm _and_ blood on the sheets, but at least he could fix that once he got his powers back so Mr. Lancer didn't have to worry about stains. Thankfully, it wasn't a lot of blood. Despite changing back to Fenton at some point while asleep—which wouldn't have done him any favours, since Jazz was probably right about him staying in ghost mode for reasons other than avoiding being dragged to a hospital, namely him _not dying_ —his shirt had helped to contain what the vanishing bandages couldn't.

It still kinda hurt to move, but that didn't surprise him at this point. It just…worried him, a bit. A good night's sleep usually gave his body enough energy to heal up the small stuff completely and significantly reduce the bad stuff.

True, his injuries could be worse. By all means, they _should_ be worse. He'd almost rather they were worse because then he could understand it. But not being normal (and therefore much better) or being worse (and therefore completely unaffected by his powers) meant something really weird was going on, and he could only assume it was from whatever Valerie had hit him with.

What was Vlad planning to do, snatch him when he was too weak to fight? He'd missed his best opportunity already. Unless he couldn't find him? Or figure out how to grab him when he was with Mr. Lancer in a way that wouldn't be suspicious? He wouldn't know Lancer knew about halfas, or at least knew about Danny, so—

There was a knock on the door, and Danny hastily threw the covers over his head and changed back into Phantom. He'd thought he was alone. The clock on the bedside table showed that it was past ten in the morning. Shouldn't Lancer be at the school? It was Friday, for crying out loud!

What if he'd called Danny's parents already and they were here? How was he going to get out of this? Staying in ghost mode was only going to buy him so much time if Lancer had—

"Phantom? Are you awake?"

 _Did you sleep?_ Danny knew that was the real question, since Mr. Lancer would be concerned over Danny's dubious state of health whether or not Danny's parents were with him. (He might be wondering about all the ways halfas were different from humans, too, but Danny figured his passing out in the car ride yesterday would've answered that question.) "Yes," Danny called, swallowing back his fears and sitting up in bed again. Maybe Lancer was alone. Maybe he was jumping to conclusions. Maybe his secret was still a secret, at least where his parents were concerned. "You can come in if you want."

Mr. Lancer—mercifully alone—walked in with a tray containing milk and cereal. "Not exactly the best breakfast in bed, but since you can eat and drink, it might provide some sustenance and help you recover faster."

Danny had no idea if this was the case, even for him, but he _was_ hungry, and he didn't have to worry that this milk had been contaminated by something in the fridge. "Thanks, Mr. Lancer," he said quietly, taking the tray. Lancer settled at the foot of the bed, probably because there wasn't anywhere else to sit except the floor; there _was_ a lone chair in the room, but it was filled with books that didn't fit into the three bookshelves already in the room. Maybe he thought that was a better place to keep them than the dresser or the bedside table, since this was supposed to be a guest room. "But shouldn't you be at school?"

"I was able to pull a few strings," he said, "so I can stay here and take care of you."

Danny wondered exactly what that would entail. "Um…."

"Eat up first, even if you aren't hungry, and then we'll change your dressings and see how everything looks."

Danny ate. Mr. Lancer asked a few general questions to try to strike up a conversation— _how did you sleep? Are you feeling any better this morning?_ —before moving on to more important things. "Have you tried using any of your powers this morning?"

Danny finished the last of the juice and—on the off-chance Lancer was right and food would miraculously help—tried to turn the glass intangible so the last few drops would fall into his mouth.

Judging by Mr. Lancer's expression, invisibility didn't happen, either.

"Nothing," he said, "but I'm feeling better than I was. Not as exhausted and more achy and sore than burning, stabbing pains. I'm…. I think I'm better than a normal person would be, if not as good as I should be."

Lancer might as well know that much. Slow or not, he had to still be healing faster than a normal human. Maybe his powers weren't entirely gone. Maybe he could do things like invisibility and intangibility, just not on the scale that he was used to. What if, in trying to turn the glass intangible, he'd only affected one side of it? What if, instead of turning his entire body invisible, he'd only managed a finger or a toe and couldn't spread that to his clothes, let alone the rest of his body? His ectoblasts could be too weak to be seen, let alone do any damage, and he wasn't sure he'd notice a millimetre of flight if it only lasted a split second.

It made a sick sort of sense, considering Vlad had to be behind this. He could still transform, and he wasn't going to die from his injuries, but he couldn't fight back or get away. And Vlad, were he so inclined to track Danny down or send Valerie to do his dirty work, would be able to capture him and strap him into some kind of machine to try to get a mid-morph sample to stabilize his clones.

(Danny, for obvious reasons, had ensured that Jack's Ecto-Dejecto recipe wasn't written down in any terms Vlad could possibly understand, and Dani's DNA had obviously mutated somewhat from his because she wasn't a perfect clone. _Her_ mid-morph sample wouldn't do Vlad any more good than his own. Vlad still needed Danny's. Which Danny was not going to give him. Even if this was Vlad's latest attempt to get it.)

Terrible as this truth was, it made him feel a bit better; understanding this was the first step to doing something about it, and it beat the absolute bafflement he'd felt yesterday. Jazz was right; he _did_ function better when he got a full night's rest. But usually the Box Ghost or—

Danny's eyes widened. "Were there any attacks last night?" he asked, overriding whatever Mr. Lancer was saying. His ghost sense hadn't woken him up, but—

Lancer broke off, and then his expression softened. "Nothing the Red Huntress couldn't handle," he said. "You aren't the only hero in this town, Phantom. It will be able to survive a few days without you while you recover."

Danny wondered if Sam and Tucker had also been involved in whatever had gone down last night—unless it _had_ just been the Box Ghost again—and, if so, whether or not they'd been able to pass the full thermos off to Jazz to empty it.

Jazz.

She was still covering for him.

What had she ended up telling their parents?

If she went with _kidnapped by a ghost_ , he probably wouldn't fare any better than when Sam and Tucker had tried _a ghost has stolen my face_. That is, his parents might buy it, especially if Jazz played up him being hurt, but he was going to face major consequences once things got back to normal.

Assuming Mr. Lancer would let them go back to normal.

Danny still wasn't convinced he was going to keep this a secret.

Lancer had moved the tray to the top of the dresser and stood expectantly at the edge of the bed. "Let's get a look at those wounds. If we soften the bandages with water to get them off, will your ectoplasm start flowing again?"

 _I have no idea._ "Not usually," Danny said slowly, "but it should be okay. I think I've healed enough." _I hope._

It was…awkward, letting Mr. Lancer clean him up and fuss over him. Danny expected it from Jazz and, to a certain degree, from Sam, although Sam's version tended to involve more sharp remarks and arm punching. Even Tucker was always good when it came to pointing out what Danny had done wrong from a spot safely across the room and out of view of the blood. But Lancer?

It had felt more natural in the nurse's office, back at the school where Lancer belonged, but in his own home? Where he was perched on the counter by the bathroom sink and Lancer was standing in front of him, pulling open various drawers or cabinets to collect the few medical supplies he had? It made Danny feel like an intruder. If Lancer didn't already know his secret, it would make him feel like a liar. As it was, he was still lying to his parents, and Lancer had to know that, had to know why, but….

"It doesn't look as good as I'd hoped, based on what you'd said," Lancer admitted as he taped the fresh gauze over Danny's side. "I know you've been through worse, Phantom, but this must certainly be slowing you down." There was a pause. "I suppose this gives you a better idea of how your helpers must feel when they get injured."

Danny groaned. He had wanted to keep Sam and Tucker out of this for as long as possible, but he should have known Mr. Lancer wouldn't steer clear of the subject for long. He'd already admitted that they knew the truth, Jazz too, but he'd only said that because he was pretty sure Lancer had already figured it out.

"I know you try to protect them, but you cannot always be there. This whole incident must surely prove that."

"They know the risks of doing this as well as I do," Danny said quietly, even though he knew that argument wouldn't get him anywhere, "and they want to help. And sometimes I need the help. My best isn't always enough when I'm alone. Even the Red Huntress knows that, and that's why we've worked together before, too." No need to throw Valerie under the bus, tempting as that distraction was. "As much as I try not to need it, sometimes I do. And we've saved the town by working together. You can't deny that."

"You can't deny that they sometimes get hurt, either."

No, he couldn't. He knew that and hated it, but he couldn't.

"We can't put this conversation off again, Phantom. It's too important to ignore when people are getting hurt."

He knew that, too. Mr. Lancer wasn't about to let this go. Unfortunately, Danny wasn't sure how long he'd be willing to keep this a secret for that very reason. All his enemies already knew his secret, so it's not like hiding his identity was protecting his family. It was just protecting him.

From his family.

And chances were, Lancer wouldn't understand that. And he should be right, Danny shouldn't have to worry, but even if his parents _did_ accept him, even if they _didn't_ experiment on him, things wouldn't necessarily be better if they knew the truth. Because the truth wasn't pretty. The truth meant he'd nearly died because of their experiments. The truth meant they'd tried to kill him routinely since this had started. The truth was that their best friend from their college years was a creepy old psycho who was more twisted than they'd ever understand, who took experimentation to a new level entirely and who wasn't afraid who he hurt as he strove to get ahead.

The truth meant therapy would be inevitable, once it started to settle in. Therapy Jazz wouldn't be able to give them by herself, try though she would. Because the truth didn't just mean the end of lies. It meant guilt. It meant pain. It meant suffering. It meant broken friendships and new horrors whenever eyes were closed. It meant severed bonds and nightmarish truths, undeniable new realities and uncomfortable unknowns.

The Fentons had never really done _normal_ , but this would rip up the few foundations the family had.

It would tear them apart.

Something so broken couldn't always be fixed.

And that's what Danny feared, really. He feared the losses that would come with the truth. What he had right now wasn't perfect, and he knew it was fragile, but he wanted to protect it. He knew what it was. He understood it. If it shattered….

"It's not just people," he whispered, raising his eyes to meet Lancer's. "It would be everything. It would be _too much_."

Lancer's expression softened. "I know it can be scary to tell a secret, especially when it is not your secret alone, but secrets aren't meant to be kept when someone is getting hurt because of them."

He couldn't know about Vlad. Just because he'd finally realized that Danny Phantom was Danny Fenton, he hadn't put together Plasmius and Masters, had he? But that was more likely than him knowing about Dani.

Danny felt a bit sick to his stomach, and not just because the smell of antiseptic still stung his nostrils. He tried to swallow back the feeling. Maybe Lancer just meant how things could blow back on Sam and Tucker for keeping his secret for so long. "What about when keeping secrets means saving lives?" Not just his, not just Vlad's, not even just Dani's. Because if the truth came out, his parents weren't the only ones to worry about. Valerie….

Valerie would come around. Probably. Eventually. Even when she found out about Vlad. She'd handled it with Dani well enough, considering. But more to the point, she'd risked herself for Dani, risked fighting against Vlad without even realizing it, since she didn't know Plasmius was Masters. And she had the skills to fight. Someone like Paulina? She wouldn't.

But she might still fight, for Phantom, even if she found out he was just Fenton. Dash, too. And everyone else.

But the Guys in White? They wouldn't care that Phantom was Fenton. They'd just see Phantom. See a ghost. Or an aberration. Abomination. Some kind of corruption of humanity.

His parents might not experiment on him, but the Guys in White would have no such compunctions, and his parents might not be able to protect him from them.

While the ghosts who invaded Amity Park might know enough to leave his family alone, might respect that boundary even when it wasn't the Christmas Truce—usually, anyway. He hadn't forgotten the stunt Johnny 13 and Kitty had pulled with Jazz, nor what Youngblood and Ember had tried to do to all the adults in town, nor anything else like that. But still. The Guys in White wouldn't hesitate. They wouldn't stop. They wouldn't see people, they'd see pawns. Something to be used to manipulate him. To make him give up, turn himself in. And he would, if it really meant saving them.

And if Mr. Lancer got involved instead of just pretending he didn't know any better, he'd be targeted, too. Danny had no illusions about that. His evil future self had picked on him, and Lancer had barely been involved back then.

Sometimes telling secrets saved people, sure.

But sometimes it doomed them.

"It's not simple. I'll grant you that, Phantom. But this situation isn't as grey as you seem to think it is. If this continues as it does, someone will end up more injured than this. Hospitals can't fix everything, especially when time isn't on their side. Your friends are human. While their actions are admirable, they simply aren't as resilient as you."

Danny took a slow breath. "Even if I…. Even if I stop working with them, that won't necessarily save them."

Lancer finished putting the rest of his medical supplies back in the drawer by the sink and stood, offering a hand to Danny. Danny took it, and as Lancer helped him down, he replied, "No, it won't. But it might mean they'll be less likely to need saving, and that's something, isn't it?"

"I guess so," Danny muttered, trailing after Lancer as he led the way to the kitchen. "But I can't promise they'll stop, either."

"I can speak with them. You can decide if you believe it'll be simpler to do that individually or all at once."

Danny wasn't too keen on taking Sam on individually, but somehow that seemed better than when she'd have Tucker and Jazz as backup. "That probably won't make a difference."

"It would be a start," Lancer pointed out as he filled the kettle. Setting it boiling, he added, "Take a seat, Phantom."

Reluctantly, Danny dropped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. There were four, but only one spot at the table was clear of books. His strategic choice was the place where those books were nearly piled to his chin.

"Look, Mr. Lancer, if I…. Say we do convince them to stop helping me. Will you at least keep this a secret then? It's too dangerous to have everyone know. Please, you _have_ to understand that."

Lancer looked over at Danny. "Do you really think they will stop? Or do you think they'll simply pretend to stop and take more foolish risks in an effort to conceal their activities from me in the future?"

Danny winced. "Point taken."

"This is a delicate situation. Believe it or not, I do understand that. I'm just not convinced you understand it as well as you think you do."

"Huh?"

Lancer set a single teacup on the table, the string of the teabag dangling by the handle. "The stakes aren't trivial, Phantom. Not everyone who dies becomes a ghost like you did. Your friends won't be stronger if they're ever caught in the crossfire. They'll be _gone_. And at that point, it would not simply be the fault of whomever fired the shot; it would be your fault and mine for letting them continue to engage in such reckless behaviour. Are you truly prepared for that?"

 _No._ "That won't—"

Lancer briefly closed his eyes. "Oh, for _The Lovely Bones_ , Phantom, please don't argue with me. It remains a very real possibility as long as this behaviour continues. _Are you prepared for that_?"

He couldn't find his voice to answer.

Lancer fetched the kettle and poured hot water into his cup. Danny watched it swirl, turning a darker brown by incremental degrees. Lancer finally sat at the table, but he didn't say anything else. He was still waiting.

Even when the teacup disappeared, Danny couldn't bring himself to raise his eyes. "I won't let it come to that."

There was a loud _clank_ of the cup hitting the saucer. "Why are you still under the illusion that you'll have the choice when you know you can be reduced to this?"

Danny swallowed. "Because…." He couldn't tell Lancer the truth. The truth was tied to Valerie, to Vlad. It wasn't his truth to tell. It wasn't his secret alone.

But Mr. Lancer might not buy a lie, now that he knew for certain how to spot it.

Danny licked his lips. "What happened yesterday. It…. It's not something that's exactly going to be frequent."

"Do you know more, then, than you first thought you did?"

Danny didn't answer.

Lancer didn't need him to. "Very well. Then answer me this, Phantom: who are you thinking of asking to help you fight this next battle, to ensure that this doesn't happen again?"

Danny was staring at the book in front of him now, but he couldn't even make out its title.

"Which _child_ are you willing to risk?"

Danny closed his eyes. Lancer's voice was harsh, and not without good reason. "They're not involved in this," he insisted. "I swear, they aren't. I'm the only one who's going to be targeted. It doesn't make sense to go after anyone else. I'm the only one he needs."

"The only one who needs?"

Danny just shook his head.

"Phantom."

Danny slowly looked up. Lancer didn't look angry; he looked determined. And as uncompromising as he had been the time he'd forced Danny to retake that English test, which didn't exactly bode well.

"You told me yesterday that the Red Huntress hit you with something you weren't expecting, and now you tell me that you're the only one _he_ needs." Lancer knit his fingers together and leaned forward. "So tell me: who is she working for and why does he need you?"

The silence stretched. "I can't," Danny finally whispered. "I just…. I can't."

"I will help you, Phantom, but you need to fill me in. If it comes down to me or my students, I would rather be the one put in danger. So please, _tell me_."

Danny shook his head slowly. "It's not my secret—"

"That doesn't matter if telling me will save people by saving you."

"It wouldn't save people." Danny shivered and pushed his chair back from the table. "It would condemn you." He stood. "I'm going back to bed. I'm still tired."

It was a lie.

They both knew it.

Lancer let him go anyway.

* * *

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed this story! Please let me know if you're enjoying it.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: If anyone's on tumblr, anotherdpdump made a board for this fic! I've got a direct link there from this fic on the AO3, or you can easily find it by going to my blog (ladylynse) by searching for posts tagged with 'the trouble with ghosts' (ie, adding /tagged/the-trouble-with-ghosts to the end of my blog url).

* * *

Danny propped pillows against the headboard and sat up in bed before pulling out his phone. He still had about forty percent of the battery life left, so at least he wasn't going to lose this connection yet. He texted Sam, Tucker, and Jazz to let them know how things were going, to let them know he was still safe with Lancer and that Vlad hadn't caught up with him. He didn't mention his conversation with Lancer, though; he was hoping to get Lancer to agree to keep silent before he approached the whole 'maybe you shouldn't keep helping me' subject. It would only serve as another distraction for them right now, especially since they wouldn't let him do this alone even if he wanted them to, and they'd already be on their toes in case another ghost attacked.

Of course, since they were in school and couldn't reply to him immediately, he was left hiding in Lancer's spare room and trying to figure out how to win an argument he was pretty sure he was going to lose.

And, well, trying to figure out what to do now, and not just with Lancer.

He didn't know how long these reduced ghost powers would last. Sure, he'd more or less figured out Vlad's game, probably should've realized it immediately, but that didn't mean he knew what to do about it. Vlad didn't need an invention like the Booo-merang to find him; Valerie would be out with her ghost tracker the moment school let out, and he couldn't count on the fact that reduced ghost powers meant a weak ecto-signature, especially when he was staying in ghost mode. Besides, in the meantime, Vlad had a whole bunch of ghosts on his payroll. He would've exhausted Danny's usual haunts by now, but Valerie would've reported yesterday's success. Vlad would _know_ he'd been hit.

And that meant Vlad knew he couldn't get very far.

Especially with the Spectre Speeder and the Ops Centre still at FentonWorks.

Hiding with Lancer was buying him time, but Danny couldn't guarantee that it would buy him enough.

If it didn't, Lancer would be danger—even if Danny didn't get into the details about Masters and Plasmius. At the rate he was recovering from this (drug, ghost virus, whatever it was; he wasn't going to put anything past Vlad), he wouldn't be able to protect Lancer when Vlad's goons showed up to collect him. So, if he was already going to be in danger, how much _more_ danger would he be in if Danny explained this truth, too?

It wasn't his secret to tell.

But it was a secret he shared, and Lancer already knew about that.

And…and he could use the help. Clearly. Because, no, he _didn't_ want to endanger his family or friends, and yes, he _knew_ it was a risk, and since this could happen, he clearly _couldn't_ protect them, so—

There was a knock on the door. "Phantom? I brought you something for lunch."

"I'm not hungry."

"Replenishing your energy may help to speed your healing process. You can't afford to miss a meal in your current state, even if you wouldn't normally consume one."

It was essentially the same argument he'd made this morning. Danny groaned, but he still couldn't argue. For one, Lancer was probably right, and for another, that was one of the reasons he was still in ghost mode. He might heal faster as a ghost, but ignoring his human half right now wouldn't help matters. "Fine. Come in."

To Danny's surprise, Lancer walked in with a steaming mug and a spoon. "Homemade soup," he said. "I thought a mug might be easier than a bowl. Don't be afraid to eat it all; I can pull more out of the freezer if you want it."

"Thanks." He reached for the mug, letting its warmth seep into his fingers. The soup smelled good, and the truth was, he _was_ kinda hungry if he let himself think about it. He hadn't realized so much time had passed. Breakfast suddenly seemed like a very long time ago.

Lancer sat on the end of the bed, just as he had that morning. This time, he seemed content to let Danny dictate when to begin the conversation. Danny took a hesitant sip of the soup, wishing briefly that he could use his ice powers to cool it down, but time would take care of that for him eventually. "Look, Mr. Lancer. About what I said earlier. I'm sorry."

Lancer's eyebrows shot up. "Am I really the one you need to be apologizing to?"

Danny took another sip of soup, as much because the broth tasted surprisingly good as because he was stalling. "I just…. Let me try saying this a different way, okay?" He lowered his mug and looked at his teacher. "Did you report the ghost attack yesterday?"

"I think the damage speaks for itself—"

"No, I know that the damage is there and everything, and probably it's a huge headache for the school board to keep us open when all these attacks keep happening, but— The attack itself. That it was me and the Red Huntress. Did you say that?"

Lancer frowned. "I wouldn't have thought you'd be interested in the budget woes of Casper High."

"I'm not. I mean, not much more than anyone else. That is, I get that it's a problem, but it's usually not my problem, y'know? Even though I'm causing all the damage. I feel bad for it, but I try to minimize it when I can, and I just…." He shook his head. "That's not what I was asking, Mr. Lancer."

Lancer's expression softened. "I didn't feel the need to mention you specifically, no."

Danny let out a slow breath. So, Lancer hadn't mentioned him by name, which meant Vlad wouldn't _necessarily_ think he could be involved in hiding Danny now. It also meant, from the sounds of it, that he hadn't brought up Danny Fenton's injuries anywhere that could be tracked by Vlad, either. Also good. It was unlikely that there was a target on his back right now, even if that would change once Vlad found him.

And it probably meant that Lancer wanted to bring up this issue with his parents before mentioning it elsewhere.

"Thank you," Danny whispered. It wouldn't buy him much time, but he'd take what he could get.

"You're welcome."

Danny took another sip of scalding soup, but Lancer was still waiting. And he had to tell him something. "I shouldn't stay here. The Red Huntress is going to be looking for me." Work and homework were probably the only reasons he'd been safe last night, but as soon as school let out, Valerie had the whole weekend ahead of her. "She has a ghost tracker. She'll be able to find me when I'm like this." The way she'd be scouring the town, using all her extra time, she'd get close enough to find him, however weak his ecto-signature might currently be. And if she got suspicious of the fact that Lancer was taking a personal day of some sort….

"I hardly think she'll shoot through my home to get to you," Lancer pointed out. "I doubt her employer would approve of such blatant damage, particularly if he wishes to keep a low profile and for her work to continue to be publicly accepted."

Danny pulled a face. "She isn't the only one working for him." He sighed, then added, "Ghosts aren't going to be stopped by a few walls, Mr. Lancer."

"You make it sound like half of our town's ghost trouble stems from this person."

"Well, he definitely didn't make it any better," Danny muttered. He put the mug of soup on the bedside table. "Look, Mr. Lancer. This is bigger than you think it is. Getting you involved isn't going to help anyone. You're worried about my friends, but they were in this from the start. They know the stakes. They won't want to stop, even knowing…even knowing what could happen. That it could get them killed, even if I'm doing everything I can to prevent that. But you? You're not going to be safe just because you're an adult."

"I'm quite aware of that, Phantom. I—"

"This has gotten you killed before," Danny whispered, not wanting to lose his nerve but needing to make sure Mr. Lancer understood, "and you knew less then than you do now."

As Danny had expected, Lancer's brow furled. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"It's a long story. Just…people have found out my secret before. I'm lucky, I guess. I've had a chance to do things over when things out of my control got bad fast. Rewrite time, rewrite reality. But this time I won't. Because no one else is involved, and I can't…." He shook his head. "Please don't ask. Just know that this time it will stick. And I don't want you to get caught up in this mess when you don't have to be."

"You seem to be forgetting that this is my choice. Perhaps you think I am uninformed, but I am willing to face the consequences of my decisions—including my decision to take care of you. Now, why don't you have some more soup and tell me about this mysterious employer."

It was an order. Danny wasn't about to pretend it wasn't. He obediently picked up the soup, blew on a spoonful, and stuck it in his mouth.

Lancer only let him repeat that process three times before asking, "What could a human possibly offer ghosts to employ them?"

Fortunately, Danny genuinely didn't know the answer to that one. He had his suspicions, of course. Vlad wasn't going to help him beat anyone if they were willing to do a few side jobs for him, and Skulker was probably free to keep his pelt once Vlad had his mid-morph sample for his clones. Still, he had no reason to share all that with Mr. Lancer. "I don't know."

Lancer's frown made it clear he didn't believe that. "He would be a man of power, I'm sure, to have such influence."

The soup was still hot, but Danny took a big mouthful anyway, just to avoid answering.

That backfired on him, since Lancer took the lack of answer for the affirmative. "He would also have to be cunning to avoid drawing attention to his activities. His public persona is more than likely quite vehemently against ghosts. Would it also be correct to assume that he has some physical wealth as well, to keep someone as skilled as the Red Huntress in his pocket? Possibly even supplying her with all her weapons, not just this one?"

Why had it taken Lancer so long to figure out his secret if he was this observant? Probably because he'd never figured ghosts could be humans, too. Danny was lucky he wasn't questioning _how_ he was half ghost, though he probably just assumed it was because of his parents. Just as well he didn't wonder if anyone else had gotten similarly caught in an experiment.

Danny lowered the mug, but he didn't raise his eyes to look at Mr. Lancer. "I can deal with him," he said. "The others know who he is, and he knows who they are, but they aren't his target and they never will be." They'd been targeted to _get_ to him, to make him do things, so that wasn't quite true, but Mr. Lancer would just be more adamant if he admitted that.

"And you believe that someone who will tailor weapons specifically to target you won't cross that line?"

Danny jerked his head up. "I never said that the weapons were to target me!"

"You said this was a weapon which could render you harmless," Lancer pointed out, "rather than acknowledging that others would be similarly affected."

"Oh. Right." He couldn't remember saying that. He wondered whether that had been before or after Mr. Lancer had figured out his secret. Frankly, he was surprised Lancer had remembered something like that. "But it still doesn't mean the others are in danger."

"Doesn't it?"

It sounded like a comeback Jazz would make, which probably meant it was a verbal trap. Danny wished knowing that would also let him know how to avoid it. "Their lives are valuable to me," he said, hating that he had to put it like this, "so killing them won't get him anywhere. That's why they aren't his target. He knows it'll throw up more walls between us."

"That doesn't mean they can't be hurt."

"And it doesn't mean _you_ can't get hurt! How come you're not fazed by me saying that you've _died_ in an alternate timeline?"

Lancer sobered. This time, he looked away, fixating on the old cream-coloured carpet instead. "I'm not unfazed," he said quietly. "I'm simply not focusing on it." He looked back at Danny. "It's better for me to ignore what could have once happened in favour of what's happening now. The fact that it happened before is no guarantee that it will happen again. It is never a good idea to be blind to the lessons of the past or the possibilities of the future, but neither is it wise to tear yourself apart over what might happen or could have happened."

"Then why the lecture on what might happen?"

Surprisingly, Lancer smiled at his salty words. "You're so young," he said. "With all your fighting experience, it can be easy to forget that." Danny opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but Lancer continued, "I'm not going to decide against helping you simply because of the risk it carries, but I am not convinced of my invulnerability, either. I am quite sure your friends are not so seasoned, particularly if you've been lucky up until now."

Danny crossed his arms but didn't argue. He had the feeling telling Mr. Lancer the others had _also_ died in an alternate timeline wasn't going to help his case. That was more likely to get him on the phone with his parents immediately. He didn't need to hang himself with the rope Lancer had given him.

"Let your friends have a chance to live their lives without this burden. Let them learn and make mistakes in situations where those mistakes won't get them killed. Once they've had a chance to grow into themselves, to know what else life can offer— That's when they'll have the judgement to know if helping you is what they want to do. That's when they'll have a better understanding of the risks this help carries."

"I think they know the risks, Mr. Lancer."

"Knowing the risks and understanding them are two very different things, Phantom."

Danny huffed and reached for the soup again. He wasn't hungry anymore, but Lancer was right; he couldn't afford not eating when his body needed the energy to heal itself. He drained the mug under Lancer's watch, using the spoon to scrape the last of the vegetables and barley from the sides.

"I don't want children to get hurt because I didn't say anything," Lancer said quietly. "This isn't a war only you can fight. The risks are real, and they are greater if your friends become reckless simply because nothing has happened to them yet. I should hope what has happened serves as a wake-up call, but if that were truly enough, you wouldn't be so resistant to the idea of talking to the others and asking them to stop."

"It's still their choice to be involved, even if you do think they're uninformed. I'm not _making_ them help me."

"But you aren't actively discouraging them, either."

Danny hesitated. "Not usually," he finally admitted. He toyed with the spoon in the empty mug, spinning it around. The ring of metal against ceramic couldn't fill the silence. "Only when I know it's too much." He'd had to reveal Valerie to her father to get her to stop, but he couldn't even use that as an example when Lancer didn't realize she was the Red Huntress.

He had powers. She didn't. She was good, but he could take more of a beating than she could. Normally, anyway. Usually, a hit like this wouldn't take him out of the fight, and it definitely wouldn't still have him down the next morning. But Valerie? Her quick reflexes—and probably her black belt training—had to be the only reasons she didn't get more injuries.

And Sam? Tucker? They'd gotten much better at ghost hunting, but they didn't even have armour like Valerie. Neither did Jazz, unless she was using the Fenton Peeler. He knew that was dangerous. They all did. He kept waiting for his parents to develop some sort of lightweight armour, something that would keep them safer than their HAZMAT suits, but aside from the ghost shield and the Spectre Deflector, they seemed more interested in offense than defense.

He was pretty sure Jazz had tried suggesting something at some point, but maybe his parents put more confidence in their aim than that of the ghosts they fought. He'd never dared push it. Appearing too interested or invested or anything like that— He couldn't risk the attention. He couldn't risk them noticing. Not when he wasn't ready to tell them.

Not when he wasn't sure he could.

Like Mr. Lancer had said, just because something had happened once, didn't mean it would happen that way again. Not once the circumstances had changed. And he knew, logically, that they probably would accept him, that his fears on that front were for nothing, but—

What if they didn't believe him?

Didn't believe his proof, the word of everyone else who knew?

What if they were convinced this was some elaborate, sick trick and took him down to the lab to find out their own truth?

He couldn't risk it.

Not now.

If that happened, the way they'd find out the truth, or at least finally accept it…. That would be worse than him being taken by the Guys in White. Because then it would be their doing.

Mr. Lancer certainly couldn't stop them if they decided he'd been influenced by a ghost. By Phantom. None of them could. And if they thought him changing back was just him shapeshifting into their son—

Danny didn't realize how hard he'd been gripping the mug until Lancer carefully pried his fingers away and set it on the dresser. "I know this is hard. I expect I'm hardly a replacement for your current support system, but I am willing to work with you if it'll protect my students. I won't allow them to keep endangering themselves this way. I could hardly call myself a responsible adult if I turned a blind eye."

"But—"

"Phantom." Mr. Lancer's tone was firm. "I will not let you continue to endanger the lives of your friends. And if this employer is so insistent about getting to you, he'll have to go through me." A sigh. "Please do not give me that look, Phantom. I am not completely incapable, though I will admit my job would be easier if I had a name."

"I _can't_. That'll only make things worse!"

"Oh, for _The Catcher in the Rye_!" Lancer growled. "Giving me the same information your friends already have will not _make things worse_. If you believe the Red Huntress or a ghost can find you here, if you believe they'll go through me to get to you, then I'm in just as much danger as I would be even if I didn't know who had sent them. More likely, I'll be in _more_ danger, because you are not giving me a chance to prepare myself to fight back. I do not intend to throw you out on the street to save myself. I do not intend to hand you over to your friends and let _them_ face the wrath of this mysterious employer trying to get to you. I do not intend to die trying to save you, but giving me the information I ask for will make that _less_ likely, not more. Ignorance is not bliss in this case. Ignorance is dangerous!"

Danny looked away. Lancer had a point, sort of, but he didn't want to admit it. He wouldn't believe the Red Huntress was working for a ghost, not when Danny hadn't said that earlier, so he couldn't pretend Plasmius was behind this. But telling him it was Masters would just invite more questions. He probably wouldn't make the leap between Masters and Plasmius, at least not right away if he did, and he might play off the obsession with him as the fact that Vlad was an old college friend of the Fentons (Jack made that point abundantly clear whenever they met up, so Lancer probably knew by now), but….

But it wouldn't hold up. If Lancer didn't know Vlad knew his secret, he'd put the pieces together soon enough. And then he'd want to know why Vlad hadn't said anything to his parents. He'd want to know why Danny was so resistant to what Vlad would play off as an attempt to help, or maybe he'd just be rightfully appalled at everything Vlad was trying to do, even before he knew the half of it. Because if he thought Vlad did know his secret and was hunting him down anyway?

There was no way he wouldn't tell Jack and Maddie.

Danny highly doubted he'd be able to convince Mr. Lancer that Vlad's apparent reaction was a very good reason why it had to be kept a secret from his parents. Because Lancer would be sure family came first. He knew how fiercely Jack Fenton protected his family from ghosts—everyone did—and he knew how readily Maddie agreed to every parent-teacher conference and how often they had to sign his homework and— He just wouldn't think they'd see a ghost instead of their son. Even if he thought Vlad did.

Well, Jazz's testimony might help, actually. At the very least, she'd attest that they had to tread carefully, test the waters first. She was good with words, even if she was terrible at giving nicknames. And Lancer would believe her. Probably. If she cautioned him, he'd wait. Then, it at least wouldn't just be Danny's word against his. Besides, Jazz thought like an adult already.

So…so maybe he could get away with it. Telling part of the truth, anyway. If Lancer was going to keep interfering, he'd find out sooner or later. And at least then he wouldn't be as star struck by the mayor as a bunch of other people seemed to be. It still wouldn't prepare him against ghosts, would hardly prepare him to face Vlad without knowing he was a halfa, too, but—

"I'm sorry for my outburst, Phantom. I meant what I said, but I should have found a better way to say it." Lancer stood and retrieved the empty mug. "Just think about it. If there is another timeline where I paid the ultimate price for my ignorance, then—"

"It wasn't your ignorance. I mean, some of it was, but it was mostly your association with me." It sounded so callous when it he put it like that, and Danny wanted to take the words back, but he couldn't do that, either.

Lancer pressed his lips into a thin line. "Very well. You know where I stand on this issue. You'll have to forgive me for not backing down."

"Wait," Danny said as Lancer turned away. When he stopped, Danny asked, "Do you at least have an ectogun? Or something to protect you from ghosts?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Fenton are quite willing to provide every citizen in town with their weaponry," Lancer said dryly. "I am not exempt. I own one of their net-throwing guns and a thermos."

Capture and contain, standard for the lesser ghosts that showed up. It was better than nothing. "Okay. Good. Um. Maybe get them. And keep them on you. Just in case." If his powers weren't working, his ghost sense may not, either. He couldn't count on advance warning, however slight. "Uh, how's your aim?"

"Not as good as yours, I'm sure. I'll fetch you the gun. It's in my library."

Danny wasn't about to ask why Lancer kept it in his library—or what room he actually considered his library when there seemed to be books everywhere. There were even books in the washroom. Not nearly as many, to be fair, but they were still there, neatly stacked on a stand between the toilet and the bathtub. Danny was used to finding half-finished inventions and completed weapons all across his house, so books were a nice, safer change, but still. There were a _lot_ of them.

By the time Lancer returned, the thermos clipped to his belt and the net gun and a glass of water in hand, Danny had made up his mind.

Once the net gun and water were safely on the bedside table, Danny said, "She works for Vlad Masters."

Lancer froze. "I beg your pardon?"

"The Red Huntress. She works for the mayor. I've…. Let's just say I've always kinda been public enemy number one where he's concerned." It was close enough to the truth, but judging from the shock on Lancer's face, Danny wondered if he would have been better off blaming ghosts after all.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: For monbijou.

* * *

Lancer sat down abruptly on the bed. He hadn't heard wrong. The Red Huntress worked for Vlad Masters.

True, their prestigious mayor had once put a one million dollar reward on Phantom's head, but Lancer had assumed Mr. Masters had had a change of heart because the reward had been lifted.

Did Vlad believe, as the Fentons did, that all ghosts—Phantom included—were a menace? Despite Phantom's continued protection of their town? The Red Huntress clearly had no compunctions about hunting down Phantom, and she was an ideal person to hide behind. Unlike Jack and Maddie, no one knew her true identity—except, of course, the mayor. And possibly Phantom and his friends, given how much else they seemed to know.

"It's…. I guess it's more of a surprise than I thought it might be. Given what you know, I mean."

Given what he knew. That Vlad was an old college buddy of Jack and Maddie Fenton's, no doubt. Lancer rubbed his temples. "I wouldn't have thought the mayor would actively try to rid the town of one of its best ghost hunters," he admitted.

"Well…."

Lancer looked up, but Phantom seemed to think better of whatever he'd been about to say. "Well what?"

"He's, ah, not trying to get rid of me, exactly," Phantom said slowly.

 _Moby-Dick_ , was Phantom saying that the mayor was ready to experiment on him? That he hadn't left his ghost hunting days behind at all? That made sense, if he truly employed the Red Huntress. Her technology was similar to but still different from anything produced by FentonWorks, yet it was too effective to have been produced without intimate knowledge of ghosts and paranormal technology. Was Vlad collaborating with his old college friends? Did the three of them intend to tear Phantom apart, molecule by molecule?

"Yeah, it's kinda messed up." Phantom was offering him a smile. A _smile_. Humour in the face of a sickening situation.

"I think this goes beyond that," Lancer said hoarsely.

Phantom's response was a shrug and a wince. Then, "But that's why I'm the focus, not my friends. And why you can't tell anyone else."

Lancer let out a slow breath. "Mr. Masters is already aware of your helpers." Phantom had told him as much before, but he nodded again anyway. Lancer was mostly trying to get the facts straight. "Despite this, he hasn't used them against you? Tried to bargain with them?"

Phantom groaned. "Okay, fine, he tried using Jazz against me once, even wanted us to fight each other, but it didn't work like he'd planned. Obviously, we didn't want to _really_ fight each other, so we just kinda put on a show until…. It doesn't matter. Point is, he hasn't tried something like that again. I think he realized that's never going to work. Like, ever."

Lancer pursed his lips. "If he has ghosts in his employ, what's stopping them from kidnapping someone and holding them hostage until you give yourself up?"

Phantom stared at him. "Because I'd win. I'd find them and beat them. They all know that. Even if I had to get help to do it, I'd win."

"Always?"

Phantom frowned. He could hear the skepticism in Lancer's voice. "Vlad's tried a lot of different things. Nothing's worked, and he's not stupid enough to keep reusing the same tactics over and over. I mean, not for _everything_. He knows how important the others are to me, but he also knows how easily I can get allies when it really matters. I don't just mean ghosts, either. The Red Huntress and I have called truces before. If I brought her in on this, he'd have to do some fancy footwork to keep his dirty work from her. She doesn't know about all the ghosts that work for him or about anything to do with me. She wouldn't still be working for him if she did."

"You seen awfully confident in your assessment of her."

"I know her better than she thinks I do, including what misunderstandings led to why she hates my guts. She's a good person, just…really, really misguided."

"And in the employ of the mayor." He hesitated. "Is she aware of his true identity?"

Phantom didn't answer right away. Then, "She knows he's the mayor, if that's what you mean."

Lancer had no idea what else he could mean, but Phantom clearly had something in mind. Lancer filed that bit of information away for later; instead of pursuing that line right now, he could pick apart some other information Phantom had volunteered. "You said you had allies. Am I right to assume this includes ghosts you don't fight with regularly?"

"Well, yeah."

"And your friends have met them?"

Phantom nodded. "I mean, I don't think Jazz knows everyone, but the others do."

Perhaps that explained young Mr. Fenton's whereabouts. He'd phoned their household this morning to request an update, but he hadn't gotten an answer until Jack and Maddie had driven past his house with a loudspeaker, alternating between calling for Danny and threatening the ghosts that surely had him. (He rather thought that was what had woken Phantom, though he couldn't be sure without asking.)

"And will the ghosts help them?" Lancer asked carefully.

Another nod. "Sam and Tucker have stolen the Spectre Speeder to go into the Ghost Zone more than once."

Because Danny was preoccupied or because this wasn't the first time he'd gotten hurt? The thought gave Lancer pause. Danny had been quite insistent about not going to the hospital. Perhaps this really wasn't the first serious injury he'd attained in his exploits helping Phantom. Perhaps that had simply been his assumption and Phantom hadn't corrected him. Why would he, when he was trying to argue so vehemently that he could protect them all?

Had Sam and Tucker come to take Danny to a rendezvous point where he could be collected by one of Phantom's ghostly allies? Had Jazz managed what they could not? Was Danny in the Ghost Zone right now, being attended to by the spirits of doctors who retained enough relevant knowledge of human biology to put their skills to use? He couldn't discount the idea, not when he'd met other ghosts who were clearly the spirits of those who had passed on from this world—Phantom included, as far as he could tell.

Lancer had no idea how much knowledge and technology from their world had made its way into the Ghost Zone, but Lancer hoped—if his suspicion was right, and especially if this wasn't the first time—that those ghost doctors did more good than harm. He'd always understood that Jack and Maddie Fenton regularly wore HAZMAT suits to reduce the risk of contamination—however many times they had to change suits for that to be the case—so if Danny were immersed in the Ghost Zone itself….

"Um, before you jump to any conclusions, they don't only go into the Ghost Zone whenever I need help. Sometimes we explore it together, and Sam's good friends with Dora, so she'll go there on her own, too."

 _Dora_. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Lancer couldn't place it, and he didn't want to fall for Phantom's bait and ask. Phantom would only too gladly latch onto a change of topic and lead the conversation away from more important points. "Is the Red Huntress aware of what your friends do for you? Of the risks they take?"

Phantom bit his lip. "I don't think so," he admitted. "I mean, she's gotta know they know their way around an ecto-gun, and she definitely knows they support Phantom, but most kids in school do, so that's not really surprising. And she's seen us together before, but I don't think she, um, knows how actively they help me. We're trying not to give her too many clues about who I am."

Too many clues about who Phantom is? Or _was_? Back when he was…alive?

Phantom let out a nervous laugh. "It gets, um, complicated. And she might shoot me anyway. Because I never told her. About a lot of stuff, not just this. I just…. You don't need to worry about her. She won't hurt my friends. Or you, if she figures out you're involved. She only has a thing against ghosts, and you're all human. If I told her everything, she'd probably back off me, too, but I…. I can't do that right now, okay? I can't."

"I would hardly force you to spill your secrets to someone who actively hunts you down," Lancer pointed out, but Phantom didn't look remotely convinced.

"Yeah? Even when it's not just her who should know?" Phantom pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them. "You don't need to keep dancing around the subject, Mr. Lancer. I know you think I need to tell my parents."

His parents?

"But I'm not ready yet, and I need you to respect that. That's why I don't want you to tell anyone, _especially_ them. They can't learn something like this from someone else. If anyone tells them, it has to be me, and it has to be on my terms. It's my secret."

 _My secret._ This wasn't the first time Phantom had said referred to it as such, but it was the first time Lancer had realized there was more to Phantom's secret than the help he was getting from Danny, Sam, Tucker, and Jazz.

And for Phantom to talk about his parents so casually, as if they were here, in Amity Park….

Lancer swallowed.

He'd known Phantom was young.

He just hadn't realized what that meant.

"Your parents," he said carefully, "truly have no idea who you are?" He could see how it might happen. For all that Phantom looked human enough, it was highly doubtful that he was the spitting image of who he'd been when alive. Coupled with the fact that his parents wouldn't be expecting to recognize any of the ghosts, they'd never think to see their son in one of them. Of course, Lancer had no children of his own, only his students, but he'd like to think—

Phantom shook his head. "Jazz says they wouldn't be hunting me if they did."

Lancer blinked. His parents were _hunting_ him? True, far more adults than children were disgruntled with Phantom (and all the damage from the ghost fights), and most households had a few FentonWorks weapons on hand, just as he did, but actively hunting down ghosts—Phantom in particular—was a different matter entirely.

"Would…would that not be preferable?"

Phantom pulled a face. "Not, well…. I mean, _yeah_ , but it's more complicated than that." Lancer raised his eyebrows, and Phantom sighed. "Please, Mr. Lancer, you just need to trust me on this."

"You are asking me to trust you about a rather large number of things."

Phantom straightened up and crossed his legs. "Okay, look. I know the chances of them freaking out and trying to capture and dissect me are pretty small, especially with the others to back me up so they know it's not some trick or whatever they might come up with. But I know where things stand as they are now, and it's not like I don't know how all the FentonWorks weapons work. And Dad's aim is terrible anyway. They've only caught me once."

Lancer couldn't help but stare. "I beg your pardon?"

"I know how to avoid their stuff," Phantom repeated. "And it's just…. It's been so long. And them knowing would change things. I mean, even if they _do_ take it well, even if they accept who I am, _what_ I am, that's not…. That's not going to just erase everything that's happened."

Avoid _their stuff_?

This wasn't just a matter of Phantom being unsure of how his parents might accept the fact that he had become a ghost.

"They're going to blame themselves," continued Phantom. "For hunting me. For hurting me. For the accident, even though it was an accident, even though they weren't around. I don't want to do that to them. I've gotta…. I need to figure out how to tell them, if I _can_ tell them, and I'm okay with them hunting me if it protects them from the truth. Does that make sense?"

It didn't make a whit of sense, not with what Lancer had been thinking.

"It's…easier, I guess. Safer than changing things."

 _It's not just people_ , Phantom had told him. _It would be everything._

This was what he'd meant.

"So just…don't tell them. Don't tell anyone. Please."

All things considered, Lancer didn't know very much about ghosts.

He was quickly realizing he knew even less than he'd thought, particularly where Phantom was concerned.

"If you're worried about how guilty they'd feel once they found out the truth," Lancer heard himself say, "how can you say that prolonging telling them will improve things rather than make everything worse? You talk as if you never intend for them to know."

Phantom looked away. "That wouldn't be the worst thing," he mumbled. "You know how my parents are. How do you think they'd take this?"

 _You know how my parents are._ There it was, plain as day. Lancer knew Phantom's parents.

Phantom's ghost-hunting parents.

Who lived here in Amity Park.

 _It's not like I don't know how all the FentonWorks weapons work._

 _I know how to avoid their stuff._

"Yeah," Phantom said softly when Lancer didn't reply. "That's what I thought, too."

Lancer didn't understand. He didn't know enough _to_ understand.

 _They're going to blame themselves_ , Phantom had said. _For hunting me. For hurting me. For the accident._

How could this just be an _accident_?

Phantom was…. He….

"Jack and Maddie Fenton," Lancer said slowly, "are out searching for their son."

Phantom didn't say anything for a moment. Then, "I don't know exactly what Jazz told them. Maybe they thought she was wrong."

No wonder at the sudden change in topic.

Because it _wasn't_ a sudden change in topic.

If he had asked Phantom if he knew young Mr. Fenton's whereabouts, what would he have been told? Would Phantom have lied? Claimed ignorance? Pretended Danny was with his friends?

"They're worried."

"Yeah, well, knowing the truth wouldn't change anything on that front, either." Phantom slumped back against the pillows he'd set against the headboard. "They're always concerned about their family, but they're also always concerned about what ghosts might be planning. Sam and Tucker told them a ghost had stolen my face once, and they believed that, so…." He trailed off, shrugged, and let out a faint hiss of pain at the movement. "It doesn't matter. Jazz can handle them. She knows I'm with you. This was her idea."

Lancer didn't know how he'd never noticed that Phantom always talked about Sam and Tucker or about Jazz but not about Danny.

"Wh…." It was hard to force his thoughts into coherent words. "Why me? Out of everyone—"

Phantom raised an eyebrow. "It's not exactly _out of everyone_ ," he cut in. "There isn't an _everyone_. That's the whole point. All the ghosts know, but I can count on one hand the number of humans who do. And it's not like I'm going to go to Vlad for this when he's the reason I'm in this mess."

 _All the ghosts know_. Yet none of them had ever used that knowledge against him, even though he clearly feared the fallout if they did and that fear gave them power over him. Leverage.

But while Jack and Maddie Fenton hunted down Phantom, Vlad Masters was…. He was doing more than that. Worse than that. _He's not trying to get rid of me._ Maybe experimentation wasn't far off, except—

Except Phantom talked like going to Vlad might be an option. For something. At some point. Under particular circumstances. _Despite_ what he's doing now.

The mayor may have discovered Phantom's secret, may be hunting him down like this because of that, but there was something else, something more, something—

Phantom blew out a breath. "And I just…. You know. You know, but you don't look at me differently. You still tried to help."

 _You know._

But he hadn't known.

 _You don't look at me differently._

Would he now? He hoped not.

 _You still tried to help._

Because someone needed his help. Because that was the right thing to do. Not because—

" _People of Amity Park, be on the lookout for Danny Fenton!"_ The announcement was loud enough to rattle the net gun on the bedside table and send ripples through the water glass; this time, Lancer surmised, the Fentons were driving down his street instead of somewhere beyond.

Phantom jerked, grimaced, and muttered, "I guess they're still doing that. Please tell me they don't have the giant billboard again."

He couldn't.

He'd glimpsed it in the distance this morning, and he doubted they'd retired it in the meantime.

Instead, they sat in silence, listening as Maddie Fenton's repeated announcement became muddled by distance and finally faded away.

"I know they're worried," Phantom finally whispered, "but this?" He made a vague gesture to himself. "This isn't even the worst of it. And if telling them everything was so easy and simple, Jazz would've been able to convince me to do it ages ago."

"How is this not the worst?" Phantom was…. He was dead. That's how one became a ghost. By _dying_. Whatever this was, however it had come to be, that fact wouldn't change.

"It's better if you don't know the details."

"Phantom." Phantom still wouldn't look at him, so Lancer continued, "You already think I'm in danger, and we're taking precautions. Talking to me will hardly put me in more danger. We've been over this."

"Yeah, but this isn't just a one-time thing." Phantom met his gaze now, his bright green eyes boring into Lancer's. "And I'm still not convinced you get that. If Vlad realizes you know as much as you do, he's going to wonder what else you know—or what else you can guess. It's better if you just pretend I'm a normal ghost and don't interfere after this. You don't want to give Vlad a reason to look closer."

"Because of all the ghosts he employs?"

Phantom shook his head. "Because he's powerful. And he's not afraid to use that power to get what he wants."

Lancer let out a slow breath. "What hold does he have over you?"

"My secret," Phantom admitted, though Lancer had already surmised that much, "but that's fine. We've called a truce of sorts on that front. He won't tell on me."

Vlad Masters wouldn't tell the world Phantom's secret, and Phantom wouldn't, what, tell everyone that the mayor was working with the ghosts he hunted? It must be more than that. It wouldn't be terribly difficult for Vlad to lie or otherwise cover up his association with ghosts if it came to that, and his background as a ghost hunter would act in his favour.

But Lancer had seen Phantom fight, time and time again. His conviction that he could win a fight wasn't entirely unwarranted. So why—?

"And you're sure you don't want to remove that power from him?"

"You mean tell my parents my secret so he can't hold it over my head? It's not really that simple. It's not just this. It's everything else, too."

Everything else.

His revelation was only the tip of the iceberg, and Lancer already didn't know what to do.

Phantom was young. Too young. And far more human than Lancer had ever realized. And he was—

"I should just go," Phantom said. "Try to keep you out of danger. Jazz'll understand, especially since I'm doing better. Since Mom and Dad are out, I could probably go through the portal and visit the Far Frozen if I have to." He saw Lancer's expression and added, "It's okay. I've got friends there. They've helped me before, and they definitely wouldn't give me up to Vlad, if that's what you're worried about."

Exactly how much did Amity Park's mayor trust the ghosts he hired if he believed they would not only track Phantom down but fight his allies to get to him? Convincing the ghosts to cause trouble on his terms in this world was one thing, but in the Ghost Zone—? What could Vlad _possibly_ be offering them in exchange for _that_?

It must go beyond a mutual desire to be rid of Phantom. That still wouldn't give the ghosts free reign, not with the Red Huntress and the Fentons in town, and the ghosts could accomplish that on their own anyway. Why would they bow to the wishes of a mere human, especially when up against someone as powerful as Phantom? They might be able to overwhelm him if they ganged up on him, but Lancer had rarely seen any of the ghosts working together. If they didn't like to work with each other, why would they work with a human?

Vlad wasn't just any human, though. He had the same background as Jack and Maddie Fenton and a lot more wealth to throw around. To Lancer's knowledge, the only way for the ghosts to get into this world was to cross through the Fenton's portal—if ghosts had a way to create them, he hadn't seen it—but the attacks were far too regular for them to have come through a single chokehold like that. Had the mayor built another portal, granting ghosts access to his city, in exchange for their help? In exchange for Phantom? Despite all the damage that resulted from the ghost attacks?

"What exactly does the mayor want with you?" It…. He had to be missing something. The risks were so great, and Lancer couldn't see a guaranteed benefit that would be worth such potentially devastating consequences.

"It's complicated." He could recognize the closed tone in Phantom's voice now. This wasn't just reluctance to tell; it was flat refusal. "He likes to play his cards close to his chest. The Red Huntress doesn't know, either, but she doesn't care. As far as she's concerned, I'm just a filthy piece of ectoplasmic scum, and Vlad's too smart to let her know too much."

Lancer had never noticed how skillfully Phantom could steer a conversation when he wanted to. Phantom had brought up the Red Huntress again to deflect from Vlad Masters, clearly thinking her the safer topic. And, earlier, Lancer would likely have happily pursued it—as a distract for Phantom, if nothing else.

But now….

"How much danger are you in?"

Phantom crossed his arms, a look of defiance plastered across his face. "I can hold my own."

"Because you're confident you'll always win?"

Phantom rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Mr. Lancer. You know that's not just me bragging. You've seen me fight. I'm _good_. Sure, Vlad's tricked me before, but he's never won any battle that counts. He's still losing the war."

Lancer might question the exaggeration of the expression if he were more certain that it _was_ a mere expression.

"But how much danger are you in?"

"Nothing—"

" _How much_?"

Phantom's mask finally dropped away, and he wouldn't meet Lancer's eyes. "It doesn't matter. You can't do anything, anyway. Vlad would deny everything and then ruin you to make a point. And it's not really any more danger than I face from my parents."

"It is," Lancer said quietly, "because your parents would stop the moment they discovered the truth."

Phantom snorted. "They'd have to believe it first."

Lancer closed his eyes and took a breath before saying, "They would test the possibility rather than reject it outright; they wouldn't want to risk being wrong."

He didn't think he was wrong. He didn't have to be a parent to have children in his life that he cared about. Knowing he'd missed something this big, this important, was bad enough, especially when he could see so many signs in hindsight that he'd misinterpreted. He sincerely doubted any truly loving relative would find reason to continue any sort of cruelty when there was any doubt to be had whatsoever.

"Fine. Doesn't change the fact that I can handle whatever Vlad throws at me. So, yeah, I guess it's dangerous, but not more so than usual."

"You're just a child—"

"I'm fourteen!" Phantom cried indignantly, and then he seemed to realize that didn't help his case and huffed. "You don't need to baby me. And you can't protect me from this danger. You knowing about it doesn't make me safer; it just puts you in more danger. Why can't you just understand that?"

"Why can you not accept that I am willing to risk myself if I can help you? You came to me for help. You can't deny that sometimes your enemies get the better of you, just as you can't promise that your friends will always be safe, that _anyone_ will always be safe, and believing you will always win is a fool's mistake."

Phantom made a face but didn't say anything.

"I am not asking you to tell me why the mayor is so insistent on hunting you when he knows you are a child. I am not insisting you tell your parents everything before you've had a chance to think through how best to do that. I am asking you to stop endangering yourself and others so recklessly, and I am suggesting that one of the ways you do so is by confiding in me and accepting my help."

Phantom said nothing.

In the distance, they could hear the garbled words of Jack Fenton this time, asking for the help of Amity Park's citizens in finding his son, as the Fentons circled around to continue their search for their son.

"Phantom, it's been too long. They need to know something."

Phantom very deliberately picked up the glass of water from the bedside table and drained it.

"Phantom."

He replaced it without a word.

" _Pride and Prejudice_ ," snapped Lancer, not pausing to consider that his conclusion might still be wrong, "if you don't tell me what you want me to say to your parents, Mr. Fenton, I'll come up with something for you!"


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: For QueenofHearts7378.

* * *

Lancer still expected a denial, even as Phantom shrunk into himself and hung his head.

It never came.

He'd thought it would. Somehow, after all of this, he'd thought it would. That was…easier than this, really. He'd rather think Phantom had enlisted Danny Fenton's help and taught him how to fight. He'd rather their wounds were simply similar, left from having the same holes in their defenses. He wished the injuries weren't identical, that they weren't the same injuries. It would be so much easier if they weren't.

He still didn't understand.

Not really.

But whether it was some sort of strong connection or if the worst had really happened, if the accident Phantom had mentioned had led to poor Mr. Fenton's death….

"Danny." Lancer didn't know who he meant anymore. Fenton or Phantom. One or both. It didn't matter. "You can't avoid this forever."

"But I'm not ready." The words were whispered. "I don't want forever. I know that probably won't happen. I just want not now. Some other time."

Lancer sighed. "Running and hiding won't solve your problems."

"No." The admission was barely audible. "It'll buy me time, though."

 _But at what cost?_

"Jazz will come up with something else," he insisted. "They're not…. They can't be the priority right now. I'm more worried about Vlad, about… _this_." He straightened up again. "You don't get it, Mr. Lancer. You can't just ignore Vlad's power."

He very clearly didn't _get_ much of this situation, but at least the issue with the mayor was on more familiar ground.

"I don't intend to ignore it. Ignoring one's problems does not make them go away. But neither does avoiding them."

Phantom— _Danny_ —blew out a breath. "Okay, okay. I know. I'll come up with something to tell them if Jazz doesn't. But seriously. Vlad. I don't know how strong my ecto-signature is when I'm like this. I don't know if it's suppressed at all, like everything else, but even if it is, the Red Huntress will be able to find me with her ghost tracker if she gets close enough. And she might try to confirm that I'm here when she's not suited up, which is why you can't tell anyone."

Lancer raised an eyebrow. "Or you could tell me who she is so I won't make any mistakes."

Danny shook his head. "No. That's her secret, not mine. No matter how many times you ask, I'm not going to tell you."

"Then do you have a solution to propose that doesn't involve me turning you out?"

Danny groaned. "C'mon, it can't be that hard for you to trust me now that you know, right? I've dealt with this kind of thing before. Vlad's hit me with this kind of thing before—"

"That is not the impression you gave me earlier."

"It wasn't as long lasting, but it still did _this_ , whatever this is. And I'm feeling a lot better than I was yesterday. I don't think anyone besides Vlad's gonna come after me like this—even Skulker isn't big on easy prey when he's not the reason behind it—so I can just give him and the Red Huntress the slip—"

"Either you are staying right where you are or I am going with you."

"But Vlad—"

"I've taken the mandatory ghost-hunting courses."

Danny snorted. " _Dad_ taught those courses." It was still jarring to hear him say it, to have it confirmed yet again, but he was continuing on before Lancer had a chance to say something. "He couldn't teach _anyone_ to aim properly, even if he could explain what you need to do. And even if he could, that wouldn't help you with Vlad."

"I'm not planning to go head-to-head with the mayor," Lancer said dryly, "but I do think I could hold my own against some of his hired help if it comes to it."

Danny did not bother to hide the blatant doubt on his face, but he didn't push it. Instead, he said, "Vlad wants me because of who I am and what I am. And he probably understands what I am better than I do. But my parents don't know that. They think he gave up everything to do with ghosts back in their university days. Moved on to greener pastures. But he didn't. He just got better at hiding his tracks."

"You've alluded to as much before."

"Yeah, but I don't know if it's really sunk in for you. Mr. Lancer, he's fooled so many people. And if something comes up that makes him look bad, he'll find a way to turn it back on whoever it was. If he finds out you're helping me, he can probably get you fired. For 'colluding with ghosts' or something like that. He's gotta have some pull with the school board; all he'd need to do is threaten to withhold some promised donation money or something like that."

Lancer sincerely doubted Danny was aware of how much Mr. Masters's donations helped with the cleanup and repair costs from all the ghost fights, but he supposed it wasn't difficult to deduce.

"Are you really willing to risk your job, your _life_ , on this?"

Lancer let out a slow breath. "I'm sorry you think so little of me," he said quietly, "that you do not think I am willing to practice what I preach. I want the best for my students, and yes, even though we are no longer in a school setting, I will risk my life to protect you. This is not simply lip service for me. I have many colleagues across the country who take similar risks, and we do not take our responsibilities lightly."

Danny stared at him, and Lancer had the feeling he still wasn't entirely believed.

"It takes a village, remember?" he prodded gently. "Not everything must be done on your own. So, please, for your sake if no one else's, tell me what I need to know to help you."

Danny bit his lip. Then, finally, "Vlad's…obsessed."

Lancer fought the urge to roll his eyes. "You have been implying that," he said, allowing a bit of testiness to leak into his tone. There was only so much he could do, so many ways he could break it down. If Danny still refused to tell him everything, well, then Lancer would just have to face whatever the danger was with blinders on and hope for the best.

"No, I mean, I think he's actually obsessed. And…. I don't know if he realizes that. If he _can_ realize that. I don't…. I've never asked if you can recognize it in yourself, or if it's just so much a part of who you are that you can't see it."

This time, Lancer waited instead of prompting Danny further.

He wasn't entirely sure he understood enough to properly prompt him, anyway.

"Something happened to him. Back in his college days, I mean. And he basically cut all ties with my parents until that reunion he hosted last year. But ever since he reconnected with them, ever since he found out about me, he's just gotten so much worse. Like he can't stop himself. He's…. It's bad, Mr. Lancer."

"He is as intent on hunting you down as your parents, then?" Lancer asked cautiously. "Simply with more skill and knowledge of the whole story on his side?"

"No, I mean, I said before, he doesn't want to kill me. At least, I don't think he does. He just…. He's tried to clone me. And it's gone wrong, _really_ wrong, but he keeps trying. He does some accelerated growth thing and…. I dunno. I don't understand it. But he seems to have gotten the idea in his head that if he can't have me, some lookalike is the next best thing. Except he still wants _me_ me. To be his son." Perhaps catching the expression on Lancer's face, Danny nodded. "Yeah, he's some seriously crazed up fruit loop."

Lancer thought over Danny's words and chose his next ones carefully. "You don't believe he realizes how far he's gone? How many lines he's crossed?"

Danny shook his head. "And the Red Huntress doesn't know what I am. She just thinks I'm the ghost that ruined her life. She won't figure out the truth until it's too late. And the ghosts like Skulker, well, I'm just kinda in their way. Most of them won't care if I'm gone."

"Maybe you should tell her."

"What?"

"The Red Huntress. Maybe you should tell her. If you can't bring yourself to tell your parents yet, start with her. You've worked together in the past. She'll listen. I can back you up."

"Uh…."

"Or would you rather I call the emergency hotline your parents set up and give them the information about their son that they're so desperately looking for?"

"Isn't that blackmail?"

"Isn't it in your best interest?"

"Not really. The truth isn't exactly great for either of us. The current dynamic is better. She's, um, not going to be as hurt this way as she would be if she knew the truth."

Danny genuinely seemed to believe his words, if the quiet acceptance in his tone was anything to go by. Frankly, Lancer found it rather astounding. He couldn't seem to see the parallels, perhaps didn't _want_ to see them, and had managed to convince himself that keeping himself in danger—Lancer would call it _mortal peril_ if anyone else were involved—was better for everyone, himself included.

He didn't want to be a bother.

Didn't want to rock the boat.

Truly believed keeping all of this to himself protected others.

"You do realize," Lancer said, "that the Red Huntress— _and_ your parents—would be hurt far more if they realized the truth only once it was too late?"

Danny didn't meet his eye. Lancer was prepared to keep pressing this point—he was determined to keep bringing it up until he made some progress on that front—but then the doorbell rang, and he wasn't prepared to leave someone standing on his doorstep. After all, it was just as likely to be Mr. and Mrs. Fenton trying a new tactic to find their son as it was some door-to-door salesman or a volunteer knocking on doors to see if he would support Mr. Masters in the next municipal election.

Who he found, however, was one of his students.

Valerie Gray.

She looked as surprised to see him as he was to see her.

"Miss Gray," he said, "aren't you supposed to be in school?"

"It's lunch," she said, and he wondered he could have forgotten that when he'd used it as an excuse to visit Phantom. Danny. "I'm selling chocolate covered almonds on my break to raise money for my dojo. Three dollars a box if you're interested." She held one up and shook it for emphasis.

"I…yes. I'll take a box." Where had he left his wallet? It wasn't in his pocket, and he didn't have any spare change on him. He couldn't just leave her standing on the stoop like this. "Come in for a moment, Miss Gray. I believe I have some change on the counter."

She slipped inside without further prompting. "I'll put your almonds on the table," she said, and he nodded in acknowledgement even as he began to search for the coins he could've sworn had been there last week. "Do you mind if I use your washroom? I'll be quick."

"Down the hall to your right," he answered. He was trying to remember what martial arts training she had; hadn't she done an assignment on that earlier in the year? He remembered that she was skilled at it, whatever it was. Tetslaff praised Valerie's skill in gym more often than not, though she always made a point of it whenever one of the others expressed concern about Valerie stretching herself too thin.

They all saw the strain she was under, of course. Being teachers did not make them blind to the social whiplash she must have faced with her fall from grace. It was no secret that Paulina no longer considered her a friend, now that Valerie was among the working class, just as it was no secret that Valerie had had to pick up a job in the hopes of paying for college. They were doing what they could for her, just as they were for all their students—offering make up exams and extensions when circumstances demanded it and letting their students know about scholarship opportunities and the like—but he hadn't realized she'd been able to keep up her martial arts training. Did Elmerton have a volunteer group at its community centre? Perhaps Valerie taught in her spare time, trying to cash in on how good such a thing would look on university and scholarship applications….

" _Danny_? What are you doing here?"

Lancer's heart jumped into his throat even as his fingers finally closed upon the stash of quarters that had somehow made their way behind his coffee pot.

Valerie had turned left, not right.

"Your parents are looking for you _everywhere_!" Valerie exclaimed as Lancer headed down the hallway, desperate to make the best of the situation.

He hadn't entirely expected to walk into the spare bedroom and find Danny Fenton staring back at him with pleading eyes.

Danny _Fenton_.

With, as before, the very same injuries as Phantom.

He'd been such a fool.

Lancer cleared his throat. "As you can see, Mr. Fenton is a little worse for the wear. He, ah, tried to help me during a ghost attack." It wasn't a lie. He still wasn't entirely sure how, but it wasn't a lie. "That did not work out for him. I thought it best that he rest before heading home."

Valerie narrowed her eyes. "Why not just take him to the hospital? Or at least call Mr. and Mrs. Fenton?"

"I'm afraid I wasn't aware that they were searching for him." She didn't believe him; he could read that much on her face. He doubted anyone in Amity Park was unaware that Mr. and Mrs. Fenton were missing their son. "Rest assured, I will correct this oversight as soon as possible."

It wasn't a good excuse, even in Amity Park, and they all knew it.

She could get him fired for this if she tried. It wouldn't be difficult for her to spin it just the wrong way if she so desired. He didn't think she would—at least, he hoped she wouldn't—but he wasn't exactly everyone's favourite teacher, either.

"It's not his fault," Danny whispered, drawing their attention. "I asked him not to tell Mom and Dad. Or to take me to the hospital."

Valerie did not bother to hide the incredulous look on her face.

"I got hurt in a ghost fight, Val," Danny said. "How do you think my parents would take that?"

He wasn't lying. He was managing to tell her the truth while making it seem something it wasn't, and he was doing it with terrifying ease. Lancer was, of course, very familiar with Danny Fenton's outright lies. They were awful. These…weren't.

These selected truths made it painfully clear how he could have been mistaken.

Valerie made a face. "They'd probably try to send you to school with weapons that you'd then get confiscated."

"Only if I'm lucky enough that they didn't quarantine me at home for a week first to make sure I didn't get contaminated or something because I wasn't wearing a HAZMAT suit."

A HAZMAT suit. Like Phantom wore. Like Jack and Maddie Fenton wore.

He really had been a fool.

"A week wouldn't be bad if it meant avoiding _that_ in the future," Valerie said, looking him up and down.

Danny's mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile, even by Lancer's low standards. "Trust me, whatever they did to me, it wouldn't avoid stuff like this. That possibility's always going to be in my future. I'm a Fenton, after all."

 _And a phantom._ Another similarity he hadn't put together. He wondered if anyone had. Jazz, perhaps, if Danny hadn't simply told her and his friends, and he supposed that would've been the only way for Vlad Masters to know about him. Danny certainly wouldn't have volunteered information like that to someone who had practically been a stranger.

Especially not when he was so reluctant to tell the truth to those he was close to when it would help him.

"You really think the ghosts are going to target you for that? I've never seen them do that in the past."

Maybe she hadn't, but she—like the rest of them—clearly hadn't seen a lot of things that had happened in the past.

"Really?" Danny asked, raising an eyebrow. "Aren't you forgetting the last time my parents went all over town looking for me?"

Valerie winced. "Okay, fine, but I've been keeping an eye on you and Jazz, and you guys don't seem to get it worse than anyone else. Everyone got that weird ghost flu. Except for, like, you and Tucker. How did you guys get around that, anyway?"

Why was she keeping such a close eye out that she'd know that?

Danny shrugged, not finding anything odd about Valerie's words. Lancer wondered if there was something else he was missing or if this was simply how teenagers—friends—talked these days. Given that this was Amity Park, it very well might be standard practice to watch each other's backs. More so than anywhere else, at least.

"Probably some combination of luck and Tuck's fear of doctor's offices and everything else. Anyway, what are you doing here? You don't have any reason to be hiding out."

"My dojo's having a fundraiser."

"You're still doing that?" Danny asked. "You've got, like, a ninth-degree black belt. How many are there?"

Lancer blinked. He hadn't remembered that Miss Gray was _quite_ so adept at martial arts.

Valerie crossed her arms. "Ten."

"Is that even attainable?"

Valerie smirked. "Not for someone who doesn't work their butt off for years and years."

Lancer hadn't even realized it was possible to attain a black belt by high school, let alone anything past the first degree.

"I mean, it's not something I'll get for a long time, but I definitely won't get it if I don't do stuff like this. Three bucks a box for chocolate covered almonds. You in?"

"You know me, Val. I'm broke. I'm lucky I can scrape together enough to grab something at the Nasty Burger. Sorry. You'll have to hit up Jazz when you get back to school, though. She's got a sweet tooth _and_ always carries cash."

Lancer thought this as good a time as any to break back into the conversation, so he cleared his throat and held out the change to Valerie. "I hope you don't mind that it's in quarters."

"I can keep track of it," she said, pocketing the money. "Thanks."

She lingered, eyes darting around the room even though Danny's never left her face.

She was looking for something.

He was waiting to see what she would do.

"Is there something else I can help you with, Miss Gray?"

She seemed to have forgotten her earlier request for the washroom because she shook her head. "No, sorry, Mr. Lancer. I'll go. I'll, um, see you soon. Get better, Danny, okay?"

"Quick as I can," he promised, and Valerie slipped past him, still looking around as she headed back to the front door.

He knew he should follow behind her and lock it after she'd gone, but he was starting to realize that wouldn't help him in the slightest.

She'd come here looking for something, and even if Danny believed her story about fundraising, believed she could have a _ninth-degree black belt_ at her age, Lancer was beginning to see that not everything added up.

He didn't doubt that Valerie had been trained in the martial arts. Even if it weren't for Tetslaff's praise of her in the staff room, her overall fitness made that clear enough. And he knew of her grit, her determination, her sheer strength of will; even in English class, that came through.

But she hadn't come here to sell him chocolates.

She hadn't come here to recruit his help to look for her missing classmate.

She hadn't asked to use the washroom because she'd needed it, nor because she was just idly curious and wanted to poke around his house now that she was here.

Like Danny, Valerie's grades had also slipped. Not as much, not so drastically, and he'd always attributed it to the turmoil that had befallen her and her father in their personal lives. He didn't need to know the whole story to see its effects. She wasn't getting as much sleep. She was tired, worn out, even considering how busy she was kept at her job at the Nasty Burger; she certainly wasn't the first student to take on a job like that in high school to begin saving for college.

Except it was more than that.

There were her vehement essays—when he gave the class the freedom to choose their topics, within reason—on the trouble with ghosts. The insistence that Phantom, considered by many a hero, was anything but. The biased view (despite presenting sources) that was clearly tainted by her own life experiences and the rhetoric spouted by the Fentons.

 _The Red Huntress will be able to find me with her ghost tracker if she gets close enough._

The fact that she had come here looking for something and not found it.

Something that had led her straight to Danny.

To Phantom.

 _She might try to confirm that I'm here when she's not suited up._

And the fact that, now that he thought about it, Valerie disappeared nearly as often as Danny these days.

And if Danny wasn't hiding anywhere except plain sight….

"Danny." Would he even get the truth if he asked? "Do we need to be worried?"

Surprise froze on Danny's face. He was too slow to rearrange his features into mild confusion. "What?"

"Do we need to be worried?" He wasn't going to say _I_ or _you_ , not after his insistence that they were in this together, whether Danny liked it or not.

"What are you talking about?"

Oh, for _The Spy Who Came in from the Cold_ , he knew _exactly_ what Lancer was talking about.

"About Miss Gray," he ground out, his understanding that Danny simply wanted to protect someone else's secret not outweighing the fact that Valerie was _also_ one of his teenaged students who was routinely risking her life. "About her benefactor. About the fact that she must be suspicious about _something_ , even if she isn't sure what's wrong. About the fact that she might not be the last person to visit right now."

"Uh…."

"Please do not try to deny it, Mr. Fenton." It _was_ still Mr. Fenton. Even…even if he was also Phantom. Somehow. Lancer pinched the bridge of his nose. "You've as good as laid the facts out in front of me. I can only be blind to so much." It would be easier to be blind to it all, but he'd never signed up for _easier_. "It's not as hard to see now that I know…more."

Danny said nothing.

Once again, the lack of a denial spoke for him.

"I even might have been able to piece it together if we were still calling her the Hunter, or the Red Hunter, or whatever it began as. Something a good sight better than Inviso-Bill, I imagine."

"Vlad's puns are terrible," Danny muttered.

But he still didn't deny it.

 _Crime and Punishment_ , but Lancer wished he would have denied it.

How had _two_ of his students become entangled in such serious matters? Worse still, the mayor—the _mayor_ —was perpetuating the problem by hunting down one, treating him as a _science experiment_ , and purposefully misguiding the other to the point where she would…could….

She'd done this to him, Lancer realized.

She'd caused the very wounds about which she was so worried.

 _She had to_ _show me some of her new weapons._

Vlad Masters was giving weapons to a student, fully aware that she was using them against another student. Encouraging it, even.

 _She had a few I wasn't expecting._

He was even inventing weaponry Jack and Maddie Fenton hadn't dreamed up. Using his knowledge of Danny's secret to better design them. Using his position of power to put more pressure on Phantom, on Danny. Lancer hadn't forgotten that million dollar reward.

 _He doesn't want to kill me._

He just wanted something so much worse.

 _The Red Huntress doesn't know what I am. She won't figure out the truth until it's too late._

Danny had said as much earlier, just before the Huntress herself had come knocking. And he had lied to her face, albeit mostly half truths and lies of omission and not correcting her assumptions, and Lancer knew Danny was right. She _wouldn't_ figure it out until it was too late. And if things continued the way they were, it would be. Valerie was too fixated on her beliefs to do anything but dismiss evidence that dared contradict them.

At least….

At least, she would be if Danny was not forthright.

"This cannot continue."

"What?"

Lancer looked down at Danny, still sitting in bed. He was too young to have all of this on his shoulders. He still didn't understand. He still didn't realize that refusing to share this burden wouldn't lighten the load of anyone else but merely weigh them down with different troubles.

He meant well, but he was wrong.

"This cannot continue," Lancer repeated.

Fear, in every line of Danny's suddenly tense body. "No, you can't tell them. You promised!"

"I never promised that," Lancer said quietly, "and I certainly never promised you a rose garden."

A brief flicker of confusion as the reference went over Danny's head—Lancer supposed he couldn't blame him; it had just been one of the book options which his students could choose to read and write about, and Danny hadn't picked that book, let alone pretended to read it—and then the fear was back. "No, please, Mr. Lancer, you still don't know everything, and—"

"Then for _The Life of Pi_ , tell me the rest of it!" He hadn't meant to snap, but he was at his wit's end. Danny was still keeping secrets, dangerous ones, and—

"Vlad's like me!"


	11. Chapter 11

_The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , he didn't think he could stand much more of this.

"Vlad's like you," Lancer repeated, and Danny squirmed. "Vlad Masters. The mayor."

"How many other Vlads do you know?" Danny mumbled, not looking at him.

Lancer didn't bother to answer that. "He shares your, ah, _affliction_ , and he's actively hunting you down?" Were there others? Lancer wasn't sure he wanted to ask right now—Danny would surely latch onto that and turn the conversation in an entirely different direction—but the thought was…disquieting. A human with ghostly abilities…. The potential abuse of power alone was a terrifying prospect, but the number of people who might attempt to gain these powers, were the truth known that such a thing was possible….

Danny pulled a face but looked up. "I dunno if you can call it an affliction. We're not sick. I mean, Vlad had the ecto-acne, but that was just because he got blasted in the face. I think. Maybe the pop did way more than just make the proto-portal malfunction. It's just…. This is more a state of being. We just _are_ this way. It's easier not to question it."

Easier for him, no doubt. Lancer wanted to press for details about whatever accident Danny was alluding to—he could guess what the proto-portal must have been, given the installation in the Fentons' basement, though he was at a loss for everything else—but he didn't want to allow young Mr. Fenton to lead him on a merry chase away from the subject at hand. Which he was clearly trying to do. Again.

Fortunately, it sounded like the circumstances that led to the creation of these ghostly abilities in humans were rare. Danny hadn't given any details about his own accident, but if Vlad's had involved a _proto-portal_ —

No. He wasn't going to ask now. The dubious safety of the FentonWorks lab could be addressed later. At least…. At least it wasn't as bad as Lancer had first feared. At least Danny was still alive. He and Vlad both displayed too many signs of life for that not to be the case, particularly if Vlad's accident had happened in his college years.

"So why, for _David Copperfield_ 's sake, would Mr. Masters be hunting you instead of helping you?" If Vlad's experience was remotely similar, and surely there must be similarity enough if the effects were the same, he could be helping Danny. Guiding him through this. Rebuilding an old friendship with Jack and Maddie while getting to know their kids. If he fancied Danny as the son he'd never had—

"Hunting me down isn't the best way of putting it, either," Danny said instead of answering what Lancer thought was a perfectly reasonable question. "He's not like Skulker. _He_ doesn't want my pelt at the foot of his bed or on his mantle or anything gross like that."

Lancer barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Danny was trying to sprinkle in little details that he hoped Lancer would follow up on instead of the more pressing matters at hand. The bait was blatantly obvious.

And harder not to take than it was to spot.

"You said he wishes you were his son. That he's obsessed, to the point that he's been conducting genetic experiments. If he wishes to be a mentor to you, why does he seem so set on trying to destroy you?"

"Uh. That's not really important. I mean, it's Vlad. It's hard to say anyway."

Sometimes, it was very hard to remember that he'd signed up to help his students, not strangle them.

"I rather think I know enough that telling me a few more supposedly unimportant details won't make a significant difference to my health, if that's what you're worried about."

Danny winced. "Can we just change the subject for now and circle back later?"

Fine. If Danny didn't want to talk about it right now, they didn't have to talk about it right now. There was more than enough time for him to tell Lancer exactly which ghost was associated with the mayor—though he had an awful feeling that he might already know, if he allowed himself to think about it for any length of time. In the meantime, there were a number of other matters they should talk about sooner rather than later.

"Would you rather discuss exactly what you should tell Miss Gray?"

"…No?"

"Because you aren't going to continue to let her do this," Lancer continued. It wasn't a question, and from the look on Danny's face, he knew that. "You can't. However skilled a ghost hunter she is, however skilled at evading her you usually are, you cannot allow her to continue to hunt you down simply because you feel that it is easier to be hurt and bear that pain and these secrets than to hurt her by telling her the truth."

"Would you still be saying that if she shot me in the face with her ecto-gun once I told her?"

"Mr. Fenton. Do you honestly believe that would be her reaction?"

Danny was quiet for a moment. Then, "I guess not. But it's still a possibility."

"A more distant one than I'm sure you imagine," Lancer said dryly. "Miss Gray is merely seeking to protect this town, much as you are. If neither of you will stop, you can at the very least share the burden and not make things worse for yourselves." Danny looked like he was trying to come up with something he could use as a decent protest to this point, so Lancer added, "And if you do not tell her now, you will only invite more trouble for yourself. She is surely suspicious of us both, and if she does go to the mayor with her concerns…."

"Vlad's going to be a problem either way." Lancer just looked at Danny, and Danny relented. "But, yeah, you're right, if Val mentions seeing me, he'll know exactly where I am. I just…. Do I _really_ have to tell her?"

That was a concession, whether or not Danny had realized it. "You do know her secret."

"That's, um, part of the problem."

"Which will only grow into a greater problem unless you actively do something to resolve it. Contrary to what we all wish, most problems do not go away when ignored. It is high time you stopped ignoring this one. And once you tell Miss Gray, you will have a better idea of how to tackle the issue when you tell your parents."

"But I don't…." Danny trailed off. Lancer didn't need to have as many years teaching under his belt as he did to recognize the unhappy expression on Danny's face. He didn't want to do this. He had no desire to do this now.

But he also knew he should, and that was one of the many reasons Lancer was going to win this particular argument.

Really, he already had.

"Are you ready to discuss Mr. Masters candidly, then?" Danny shook his head, so Lancer sighed and got to his feet. "Very well. I'll see if I can catch Miss Gray—or the Red Huntress. Please, for the love of _Robinson Crusoe_ , stay here. You won't be doing anyone any favours if you try to sneak off, least of all yourself." In a softer tone, he added, "You aren't out of the woods quite yet."

"Vlad doesn't want me dead," was all Danny said. He didn't promise to stay put, and Lancer wasn't keen on the idea of trusting in young Mr. Fenton's common sense, but between what Danny had confided and what Lancer had guessed, he hoped there was enough trust between them for Danny to trust him, too.

And trust him enough to listen to him.

He didn't know if he'd be able to find Valerie, but he knew that if he didn't leave now, he had no hope until after school was let out. The lunch break would be over soon. If she truly intended to observe that, she couldn't stay in his neighbourhood for long, even if she was looking for clues to Phantom's whereabouts. Furthermore, if he were able to find her, convincing her to come back with him would take more time. If Danny truly wanted to run, he'd have ample opportunity.

But trust must go both ways.

Still, it was hard not to regret leaving Danny alone.

* * *

Danny wanted to bolt. He stayed in bed, holding his breath and listening as Lancer locked the front door behind him. And then he wanted to jump up and transform and fly away and hide.

Except he still couldn't fly, and even if he just walked out the front door and left it unlocked behind him, invisibility was still out. And he didn't know what he could tell his parents about what had happened to him when they inevitably found him. If he walked out as Fenton, someone could call them, if only so they could get some peace and quiet. If he walked out as Phantom, well….

Danny sighed and slumped back.

Despite what he'd implied when talking about Sam and Tucker borrowing the Spectre Speeder, getting into the Ghost Zone was easier said than done right now, if only because getting home undetected seemed nearly impossible. It offered no guarantee of sanctuary, anyway—at least not from Vlad. Even if there were somewhere safe he could go, running wouldn't solve his problems. Lancer wasn't going to let this go. He wouldn't just forget about this. He wouldn't just ignore it. Danny had no way to reset the situation.

He wasn't sure he'd do that even if he had the chance.

He hadn't thought anyone would react like this. Jazz was concerned, sure, but she'd never tried to stop him from doing what he was. She opposed Vlad when she could, they all did, but he knew she wasn't doing as much as she might because protecting his secret meant protecting Vlad's, too.

Except Lancer had figured out his secret, and Danny had told him about Vlad, and even if Vlad could get Lancer fired or worse, Lancer was willing to take the risk.

Or, more accurately, Lancer was willing to face the consequences.

Because there would be consequences.

There _had_ to be consequences.

Even Valerie…. What would Valerie say to this? What would Lancer say to her when he found her? How much was he going to tell her before he expected Danny to admit to everything he'd kept secret for so long? Would Valerie even be able to look him in the eye after this? Would she warm to Phantom because it was him or scorn Fenton because of what he was?

"I need to not worry about this," Danny muttered. That was easier said than done, of course. Just because he couldn't control how anyone else would react didn't mean he wouldn't rather keep them in the dark forever.

But Lancer was right.

Sooner or later, that ignorance would put them in danger. He might not be able to protect them. And…and not telling them was as much for selfish reasons as any excuse he told himself to justify putting off telling the truth. He really was protecting himself more than he was protecting them.

It was just…hard.

Even just thinking about telling them everything. Valerie, his parents…. So much had happened. Maybe too much. He knew it was easy to put it off, he knew that would only make telling them later harder, but he still….

He still wished he had more time. That he could do this on his own terms. That he didn't feel forced into it, between Vlad's actions and Lancer's decrees.

If he was being honest with himself, though, he knew that he might never tell anyone unless he had to.

It was too easy to focus on the possible negatives than dare to hope for any of the positives.

Danny lost track of time. He didn't notice the door open, but he heard voices, and a sudden terror seized in his chest. Lancer had found Valerie. Whatever he'd told her, he'd brought her back, and—

"Danny?" That was Valerie, knocking on the door frame of Lancer's spare room. Danny blinked and tried to focus. Judging by the confusion on her face, Lancer hadn't told her much. "Mr. Lancer said you needed to talk to me?"

She didn't ask why it couldn't wait, why he hadn't said anything when she'd been there earlier, or what would so important that Lancer had gone after her and would be perfectly okay with her skipping school for this.

She didn't really need to, though.

"Yeah." His voice was weak. Danny swallowed, unsuccessfully trying to push down his fear, and said, "Sit down, Val."

She looked over her shoulder, but Lancer hadn't followed her. She moved to the foot of the bed and sat. As the silence stretched between them, Danny could hear a kettle beginning to boil.

Tea—or whatever Lancer offered them—wouldn't fix this.

Danny wasn't even sure it would smooth things over.

But it would give him something to hide behind, and Danny was grateful for that.

"What's going on?" Valerie finally asked.

"I…." How was he supposed to go about this? He never intended to tell Valerie like this. He wasn't even sure he'd ever intended to tell her. "It's, um…. It's kinda complicated."

She waited, raising her eyebrows in a prompt to continue when he didn't.

"It's just…." Asking her to promise not to freak out wouldn't do any good. "Look, recently Mr. Lancer, um, kinda found out a few things."

"About?"

 _Everything_. "Some, uh, ghost stuff. It's…. I'm sorry. This isn't easy to explain."

Valerie frowned. "Danny, if this is about something your parents invented, why not talk to Sam and Tucker? They know more about that stuff than I do."

"It's…not exactly that? It's, uh…."

"Look, just why did you want to talk to _me_? It's not that I don't want to be your friend, but this doesn't really seem like it involves me. I should be in school. You should probably be sleeping if you won't go to a hospital. Y'know, to regain your strength."

There was no easy way to say any of this. "I know your secret."

She froze for a split second before forcing a smile. "It's not really a secret anymore. Besides, I hardly have to do the mascot job now. I've got enough seniority that I'm usually on cash or in the back."

"I don't mean your job at the Nasty Burger." He should just come out and say it. He should—

"I made you two some hot chocolate," Lancer said, coming into the room with two steaming mugs topped with little marshmallows. He set them on the dresser. "I'll be in the kitchen doing some marking if you need anything."

They watched as he left, neither moving to grab the hot chocolate. Danny was tempted, but—

"This is weird," Valerie said. "I mean, Mr. Lancer's being nice and all, but it's still weird. I'm just going to head back to school, okay? Call me after if you actually need something, and—"

"I know you're the Red Huntress," Danny said.

Valerie couldn't school her expression quickly enough, but she still poured the incredulity into her voice as she asked, "Are you kidding? You think _I'm_ the Red Huntress? I mean, I'm flattered, she's awesome, but I barely have time to do my homework as it is."

"You got your new suit from Technus," Danny continued, "but Vlad still supplies all your weapons. And I'm assuming he empties your thermos, too. He's got a ghost portal in his secret lab."

Valerie stared at him. "Vlad. As in Vlad Masters? You think he has a secret lab with a _ghost portal_? Your parents are the ghost hunters, Danny, not him."

"They worked together in college," Danny said. "They thought Vlad gave it up after his accident, but he didn't. He just focused on some other stuff for a while." He took a slow breath and then chickened out rather than take this opportunity to spill everything. "I know the whole story, Valerie. Including why you started doing this in the first place. You don't need to keep pretending."

Valerie studied him in silence, maybe trying to figure out if she could convince him he was wrong. In the end, all she said was, "I'm sorry I wasn't there to help when you got caught in that ghost fight."

 _You were._ "It, ah, wasn't the kind of ghost fight that you're thinking. Look, I know this is a lot to take in. I've known for a long time. Pretty much right from the start."

"How? Who told you?"

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "No one really needed to tell me. And, uh, you should know that Lancer figured it out, too. When you came by this afternoon."

Now her eyes were narrowed. "And what gave him that idea? That I'm the Red Huntress just because I dropped by to do some fundraising?"

Danny swallowed. "Because he knows—we both know—that that's not why you really came. You're looking for Phantom."

Valerie straightened up, the last vestiges of her pretense dropping away completely. "He's here, isn't he? I knew it. My tracker's _never_ been that far off. He's the one who told you two, isn't he?" Perhaps catching the look on Danny's face, she hastened to add, "It's nothing personal, I swear. I know you think he's a good ghost, but—"

"Valerie, the whole reason you're hunting ghosts is because it's personal. You think Phantom's the reason your dad lost his job, and—"

"You don't know the whole story," Valerie interrupted. "You can't, so don't pretend you do. And it's not just about Phantom. He's not the only ghost in this town. He's just the only one that's convinced everyone else except your parents and Mr. Masters that he's good."

"Actually," Danny said slowly, "you're the one who doesn't know the whole story."

He wished he had the hot chocolate to hide behind now, but it was a good thing Valerie was empty-handed; she might be tempted to throw it on him otherwise. It wouldn't stop her from calling up her suit and trying to shoot him, but hopefully the fact that this was Lancer's house would if nothing else did. Maybe she'd just settle for screaming at him?

"What are you talking about? Of course I—"

"The thing is," interrupted Danny, "you never let me tell it."

"Just now?"

"Pretty much any time you saw me." She was confused. He could see that easily enough. Confused and ready to protest. Again. And he…. He just had to say it. Say it and show her. "Cujo's not my dog, and I never meant to ruin your life. I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I'm…." He'd come too far not to say it, but he found himself staring at his hands and unable to meet her eyes. "I'm Danny Phantom."

Silence.

He risked looking up, only to see her staring at him. "I'm, uh, not kidding. I really am Phantom."

Her expression gave away nothing, so he risked transforming.

It was the only thing he could do to show her, anyway. To prove that he was telling the truth. About everything.

Valerie's expression tightened, her hands balling into fists, but she didn't call out her suit. She didn't try to shoot him.

She blinked.

Blinked again.

Abruptly stood up and left— _fled_ —without a word.

Danny didn't try to follow her. He just sat there, hoping she'd come back. When he heard Mr. Lancer down the hall, he knew she wasn't. He got up, closed the bedroom door, and grabbed the two mugs of hot chocolate from the dresser. He kept one as he crawled back into bed and set the other on the bedside table, hoping the drinks would be distraction enough from what had happened.

The mug was lukewarm in his hands, but his insides were cold. He wasn't particularly hungry anymore, but maybe this would warm him up. He just felt… He just needed _something_. Jazz would probably hug him, talk to him, but he wasn't about to go out there and chase Valerie down. He'd rather ask for her forgiveness later. Sometime when he'd worked up the nerve to see her again and she'd actually _want_ to see him again.

Danny took a sip of the hot chocolate. The marshmallows had melted into a sweet foam on top. Ordinarily, he'd like it, but now….

It was hard to keep his stomach from turning, given Val's reaction.

After how Lancer had taken it, he'd hoped…. He'd hoped it wouldn't be this bad. He'd hoped she'd at least _talk_ to him, even if that talk had started with yelling.

But just leaving….

It was too easy to remember Spectra's words. Too easy to be tempted to believe them.

 _Not a ghost, not a boy. A_ freak _. Just some creepy little boy with creepy little powers._

Valerie must see him that way, and if she took it like this…. He'd have to do the damage control he could. Convince Lancer to give it up. Not keep pursuing this, wanting him to tell his parents or do something about Vlad. Things didn't have to change. He didn't…. He couldn't….

The first tear dripped off his chin and into his hot chocolate.

By the time the last one fell, the drink in his hands was cold.

* * *

Lancer had made a point of leaving the kids to themselves. He didn't think he'd be a mediating force as much as an interference; the fact that he'd arranged everything, that this meeting was taking place on his terms at his house, should be mediation enough. If he gave them the time to sort this out for themselves, they could work through whatever needed to be worked through. Then, he could help them when they were ready for his help.

He only got halfway through the first essay before Miss Gray appeared at his side. A few tears tracked down her cheeks; most still gathered in her eyes, no doubt blurring her vision as she looked down at him. "Did you know?" she whispered.

He had perhaps misjudged the situation after all. Lancer gestured for Valerie to pull out a chair, and she did, barely looking as she flopped down. "I learned about your, ah, extracurricular activities less than an hour ago."

"That's not what I meant."

"I'm afraid I only found out about Mr. Fenton's condition this morning as well." In truth, it hadn't been long before Miss Gray had turned up on his doorstep, but it felt much longer.

Maybe he had pushed too hard, rushed this, but given the circumstances his students were facing, he couldn't bring himself to regret it.

It was better that the truth came out now rather than in worse circumstances. Whatever Danny thought, he couldn't keep his secret forever. From the rest of the world, sure, but those he interacted with so often? Particularly when he'd said his ghostly enemies were well aware of the situation? Not all the ghosts he faced would be so honourable as to respect his wishes. Sooner or later, one would come along which would use his secrecy against him.

As far as Lancer was concerned, Vlad Masters already was.

"Then you…." Valerie sniffed and wiped at her nose with the back of one hand. "Then you know what I've done. What I've been doing. I…I thought…. Why wouldn't he just tell me? Explain? I wouldn't have…. I wouldn't…."

"I expect he was afraid," Lancer murmured. He reached over to the counter for a box of tissues and passed them to Valerie. She took one and almost immediately needed another. "Not of you, Miss Gray. Not exactly. He was afraid to hope for the best. This means that he feared not being believed, that the misunderstandings would grow, or perhaps that people would be angry at him for keeping his secret as long as he did and not try to understand why he would make that choice. Perhaps most of all, he feared the consequences of hoping the truth would be well received and finding that hope misplaced."

Valerie sniffled but said nothing.

"Some of his reasons for keeping his secrets," added Lancer quietly, "might well align with yours."

She stiffened but didn't deny it, which confirmed his suspicion that very few people knew the identity of the Red Huntress.

"Another reason for wanting to keep his secret is that he didn't want to hurt you with the truth."

"That's stupid," Valerie said immediately. "I mean, I could've…. I almost…." She shook her head. "I need to tell my benefactor. He'll…. He'll be able to fix my stuff. Make sure it doesn't hurt Danny. So I don't do this again by mistake. I don't…. I can't hurt him. Not again."

Lancer blinked. Danny hadn't told her that Vlad—? "I'm afraid Mr. Masters is already aware of the situation."

"What?" The news seemed to have shocked away her tears. "No, he can't be. He's only after ghosts. Danny's human." She hesitated. "Isn't he?"

"He's still human," Lancer assured her. He didn't know the details, but if nothing else, Danny was human in every way that mattered.

At least Valerie wasn't trying to deny Vlad's involvement. She no doubt correctly suspected that Danny had filled him in on that little tidbit after he'd deduced her identity. That was for the best; he'd like her cooperation moving forward.

"Then he can't know. He wouldn't…. He _asked_ me to go after Phantom!"

"From what Danny tells me," Lancer said quietly, "he is not the most scrupulous of people." Cloning. Experimentation. He'd spare Valerie the details for now; she'd no doubt have questions he couldn't answer. "You would have to ask Danny to explain what he can to you. In the grand scheme of things, I fear he's told me very little."

Valerie said nothing, focusing instead on stuffing the mound of damp tissues on her lap into a dry one, which she promptly shoved into her pocket.

At least it wasn't another denial.

"I know this is a lot to take in." _Treasure Island_ , he knew. "It may be little comfort, but I called the school after you went in to talk to Danny. Your absence this afternoon is excused. I know you would likely prefer to clear your head, but if you're willing, Danny could use our help."

Her mouth twisted. "Right. Because he's still recovering. From being in a ghost fight. Where _he_ was the ghost." She took a shuddering breath and wiped at her eyes. "Yeah. I'll do whatever I can."


	12. Chapter 12

Danny groaned when he heard the knock on the bedroom door. He'd put his barely-touched cup of hot chocolate beside Val's on the bedside table—why had he ever thought he might drink them both?—before throwing the sheet over his head and snuggling into a nest of blankets. He just didn't want to face anyone right now.

Lancer had been so confident that telling Valerie was the right thing to do, that it would go well, and it…hadn't.

He'd been so caught up in his thoughts that he'd never noticed when she'd left the house, but at least Lancer had left him alone. He hadn't wanted to face anyone. He still didn't.

Maybe if he pretended to still be asleep, Lancer would go away.

Instead, he heard the door open. Right. He should've known that wouldn't work. His groan had as good as acknowledged Lancer's presence. "I don't wanna talk about it," he muttered, not caring that his words were muffled because he didn't bother uncovering his head.

"Danny?"

The tentative voice belonged to Valerie, not Mr. Lancer.

Danny threw the covers off of his head and turned to look. Valerie was standing in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. He sat up. "Val? I, uh, I thought…."

"I'm sorry," she said. She moved to sit on the edge of the bed, and he pulled up his feet to sit cross-legged to give her more room. "I didn't know, I swear. I would never have…. I should have let you talk. I should have listened to Phantom. I was…. I was angry. At everything. And I took it out on you and—"

"It's okay," Danny said, breaking in. It was suddenly hard to speak, the lump in his throat appearing this time for entirely different reasons. "I…I knew you didn't know. And I should have told you earlier, I guess. I was just…." He trailed off and shrugged.

"I get it." She blinked back tears of her own. "I'm not mad that you didn't tell me. I'm mad at myself for not figuring it out. And I…. I hope you can forgive me for what I did. Yesterday and all the times before that."

"You were only trying to protect your home. Nothing wrong with that." He offered her a small smile. "I mean, when push came to shove, you worked with me. We can just call a permanent truce this time. We'll just need to, um, figure out what you tell Vlad."

Valerie's mouth thinned. "You really think he knows about you?"

"I know he does. He knows everything. He…." Danny hesitated. He knew Valerie must've talked to Mr. Lancer, but how much had he told her? "It's more messed up than you realize."

"He knows you're human and is still hunting you. You can't get much more messed up than that." She didn't bother to hide the disgust in her voice. "Seriously. Even if he worked with your parents—" She broke off. "Wait. They don't know either, do they?"

Great. Of course the conversation would go this way when he needed to tell her about Vlad. Because he really wanted to have the conversation about his parents now. "Um. Not yet. But about Vlad—"

"Danny, you need to tell them. What if they hit you with something like I did? You're not in great shape now, and they might get you with something way worse."

She'd definitely been talking to Lancer.

"I…. I could've _killed_ you. And they might if you don't tell them until it's too late! You can't…. You don't seriously think they hate ghosts more than they love you, do you?"

She'd never had to sit through supper, listening to her dad talk about all the ways he was going to destroy ghosts, tearing them apart molecule by molecule.

She'd never had anyone she loved tell her in a cheerful voice that ghosts don't feel pain, however many times it was pointed out that there was no proof of that and much more evidence to the contrary.

She'd never had it made painfully clear that her very existence was hated, never been told she was loved in one breath and cursed the next.

Valerie punched him in the arm. "Spoiler alert, since you're too blind to see it: they don't. They wouldn't be going all around town looking for you if they did. They'd be, I dunno, planning to storm the Ghost Zone or something. Something more targeted at hurting ghosts than getting you back, even if they still say it's about getting you back."

"Thanks." Her vote of confidence meant more than Lancer's. She'd been in the same shoes as her parents, after all.

"And, um, if you want, I can be there when you tell them. If you really think you'll need to do damage control. I don't know what they think of the Red Huntress, but it might help them to know I'm on your side."

Danny blinked. "You'd be okay with me telling them who you are?"

Valerie nodded. "I was thinking I'd tell them anyway. I don't…. I don't want to keep working for Vlad if you're right. But I like what I do. I don't want to give it up."

"Your dad might be happy if you cut back a bit," Danny pointed out. "We could work together or even take shifts when one of us really needs a break. Between your tracker and my ghost sense—"

"You have a _ghost sense_?"

"It's just what I call it." He really didn't want to get into that now. Besides, if Valerie was going to defy Vlad's wishes and not keep hunting Phantom, she'd be in way more danger if she didn't know everything. "Honestly, my parents will be thrilled that you're interested in hunting ghosts. But you should know Vlad—"

"Do they know he's still doing paranormal research, too?"

Danny shook his head. "They don't know anything. It's not just that Vlad has ripped off a bunch of their designs and made a few of his own. It's that…. Valerie, you'll need to be really careful around him. Vlad's just like me."

She stared at him. "Like you?" The _what's that supposed to mean?_ was unspoken, but it was obvious that she hadn't connected the dots.

Granted, Danny wasn't sure Lancer completely understood, either.

Just because Vlad was part ghost, too, didn't mean Lancer had realized _which_ ghost. And Vlad would be very, very careful never to call Plasmius by his first name in Valerie's hearing.

Danny saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned to see Lancer in the doorway. This time, he'd brought a small tray with fruit and cheese and crackers. "You might want to sit down, too," Danny said before Lancer could ask if he could join them.

Lancer nodded, setting the tray down between Danny and Valerie. He cleared the books off the chair in the corner and pulled it up so he was sitting across from them. When he was settled, Danny looked between Lancer and Valerie and took a deep breath. "Vlad Masters is Vlad Plasmius." He watched Lancer's brow furrow and Val's mouth open and close, and he pressed forward. "That's why the Wisconsin Ghost moved to Amity Park. Because Vlad moved here. When he realized I was the same as him, he got it into his head that I should be his son."

Valerie swallowed. "Like…figuratively, right? He thinks he should teach about, um, all of…that? Treat you like a son and whatever?" She waved a weak hand at him, presumably since he was still in ghost mode.

He could only wish it were that simple. "Unfortunately, no." He didn't want to give details. Luckily, they didn't ask. Valerie probably didn't want to know, judging by the look on her face, and Lancer's frown might mean that he didn't want to press the point right now. Danny had already told him enough that he could guess the rest, anyway. "Whatever he gave you to use against me is working. I can't use my powers. I mean, I'm healing faster than a normal human, but not as fast as I should be, and I can't do anything else."

She pursed her lips. "He told me it should incapacitate you. He…. How can he be _Plasmius_? I mean, he invited the best ghost hunters in the country to come to town. And besides, they don't even look alike. Not like you do."

"One thing he doesn't exaggerate is being good at manipulation," Danny said flatly. "Whether it's manipulating me or you or everyone else in Amity Park. And ghosts can change their appearance over time. I haven't figured it out, but I've seen it happen."

"What else were you told about the weapon's effects?" Lancer asked. "If we could discern how it works—"

Danny was shaking his head even as Val said, "It's a chemical. I just assumed it was an anti-ghost chemical. I didn't ask questions."

"Even if you had," Danny added, "Vlad probably would've lied to you. Or left out something important. He wouldn't tell you everything unless he knew you wouldn't understand it. We'd have to break into his secret lab to get the formula. If we knew he was out of there—and that he didn't leave a clone behind—then we could just activate the Maddie Program—"

"The what?"

The way Valerie said it, she didn't want to know. Danny couldn't blame her. He hadn't meant to tell them this part. It had just slipped out. "The appropriate reaction is 'ew'. Because, yes, it's exactly what you think it is. Or at least, it looks like you think it does. Vlad built a hologram. He's one _seriously_ crazed-up fruitloop."

Lancer sucked in a breath. "You have to tell your parents. That, ah, _revelation_ of Mr. Masters aside, they would be the only ones who could hope to understand what has been done to you and effectively counter it. If we are successful in retrieving a formula, we would need to give it to them."

"I'll get it," Valerie said. "You can file a restraining order or something, and I'll break into Vlad's lab." She paused. "You're sure it's a _secret_ lab? I've been in—"

"Have you seen his ghost portal?" When Valerie shook her head, Danny said, "Then he hasn't shown you his most secret lab. I mean, I think they're connected, backing onto each other, but he might have a wall between them and just phases back and forth. Or maybe it's whatever door you think leads to the broom closet." He told her how to find it and how to activate the Maddie Program—"Take Sam and Tucker with you. They know everything, you'll need help, and Tucker can upload his Jack Program virus again."—and told her to ask Jazz for any supplies she thought she might need going into this.

"A moment, Miss Gray," Lancer said as Valerie got to her feet. "There may be a simpler solution to this. Do you have any further samples from your weapon?"

"I've got one shot left," she said, "but I wouldn't call it a simpler solution. I can't reverse engineer this, and Danny definitely can't help with that. He managed to make something explode in chem, and we were just doing titrations."

"That was one time!"

"Regardless," Lancer said with a pointed look that had Valerie slowly sinking onto the bed again, "your final shot, as it were, could be useful. If not in reverse engineering the formula, which as you say would be quite difficult indeed, then in giving Mr. and Mrs. Fenton an idea of what they are working with."

"Or you could use it against Vlad," Danny said. "I mean, I don't know if it _would_ work on him, but you could try. If you're desperate. It's the first thing you should shoot if you encounter Masters or Plasmius and can't talk your way out of something."

Lancer sighed. "In any event, you are hardly prepared to undertake such a venture at this precise moment. If Mr. Masters has provided you with all your weaponry, I do not think it would be prudent to trust it in a fight against him. More to the point, if you have worked with him and none of your equipment can detect that he is a ghost—"

"Have Tucker take a look at everything," Danny advised. "He should be able to hack into it and reprogram it. Vlad probably made sure nothing recognizes his ecto-signature."

Valerie frowned. "I think I would've noticed if my stuff didn't pick up a ghost."

"Right, because you fight Plasmius all the time."

She opened her mouth to protest and then slowly closed it. "Oh."

"Technus is on his payroll, too, so a quick diagnostic on your suit wouldn't be a bad idea, either. Vlad might have a tracker on you, too, for all we know." Danny was actually pretty sure Vlad _would_ have planted a tracker somewhere—probably more than one place, actually, on any of the multiple weapons he'd given to Valerie, assuming it wasn't built straight into the suit Technus had made—but he didn't want to tell Val that right now. She was taking all this very well, but that might be a bit much.

Besides, thinking about the likelihood of Vlad tracking her just made it more likely that he'd find Danny at his current hiding spot. Sure, Vlad wouldn't have reason to look at it right now—he'd assume Valerie was in school, where she was supposed to be—but the idea of Vlad looking at that data later and figuring out where she'd been all this time…. It wouldn't be hard for him to find out that this was Lancer's place. Or to send ghosts to attack it.

Of course, if Valerie was still here when it happened, her tracker should pick up any ghosts he didn't, but that was assuming Vlad wasn't able to disable anything remotely. And Vlad might suspect that Valerie had found out Danny's secret if he started to wonder why she'd stuck around for so long, which would make him more likely to act—despite this being Lancer's place. He'd hedge his bets—it was _Vlad_ , after all; he wouldn't just waltz in and do something to confirm that he's Plasmius—but that didn't mean he wouldn't take any risks.

Just because he might not have ghosts launch an all-out attack until he knew for certain that Danny had spilled both of their secrets, it didn't mean he wouldn't send ghosts here to eavesdrop once he looked into Valerie's whereabouts.

And it didn't mean he wouldn't try to stage something and make it look like a random ghost had come to kidnap Fenton or Phantom, especially if he didn't know the others had learned Danny's secret.

And if he'd sent a few ghosts to watch Sam and Tucker and Jazz to try to find out Danny's location from them—

"Mr. Foley and Miss Manson may cut class, but I'm afraid I have no power to excuse their absences as I have yours. They are still at school, and it would be more than a tad suspicious to have a second ghost-related emergency of which Mr. and Mrs. Fenton are unaware. Furthermore, even once you do meet up with them, Mr. Foley's work will take time, and we don't know what Mr. Masters is up to."

"Council meeting tonight," Valerie said immediately. "That's why I'm out searching."

"Doesn't mean he didn't leave behind a clone, ready to pretend he got out early in case you found me," Danny pointed out. It was a relief to hear that Vlad really was busy—maybe they'd be lucky and he would be too distracted to look into this too much on his own, especially if he was so confident in his own invention and its effects—but Danny knew better than to assume it would buy him all the time he needed. "It doesn't mean you're the only one searching, either. He has a lot of ghosts working for him, and I've been in one spot since yesterday. I'm kinda surprised you're the only one who's found me."

Valerie snorted. "I'm not. Surprised, I mean. You barely have an ecto-signature. My tracker kept dropping the marker completely. I thought it was broken. Even when I came here, I didn't really expect to find you. I thought it might be some of those tiny blob ghosts."

That was a relief, too. He didn't know how many ghosts out there had some kind of ghost sense like he did, but those who relied on technology like Skulker and Technus would have as much trouble tracking him down as Valerie had. And if Vlad had just sent out the vultures again, well, they got distracted. Not as easily as someone like the Box Ghost, but still. It would slow down the search, especially if Vlad hadn't had a starting point.

And even more so if he'd started with Danny's usual haunts and was trying to work his way out from there.

Granted, if Valerie hadn't come here solely because she'd found some reason to be suspicious of Lancer's absence, then— "So your fundraising was legit?"

"Two birds with one stone," Valerie said smoothly. "I figured I'd expand my area and hit up one neighbourhood at a time."

"More to the point," Lancer said, "I'm not comfortable with you taking all this risk, regardless of your activities in the past. Mr. Fenton, you must tell your parents, and it would be better if you did so before we began."

Neither of them was willing to let him put that off for long, were they?

He could come up with dozens of excuses to tell them later, and they'd argue each one.

And with two of them, they were more likely to win.

Danny sighed, leaning back against the headboard and closing his eyes. "Fine," he said, changing so he looked like plain ol' Danny Fenton again. He'd rather start this explanation looking like himself rather than the ghost they hated. "Call them."

* * *

Valerie stayed with him while Lancer made the call—and a few more, including one to Jazz's cell phone to warn her what was going on. She didn't answer—she never picked up for numbers she didn't recognize—but she _did_ check her messages, and Danny had told Lancer exactly what to say. The break between classes was coming up, and she'd look at her phone then.

Assuming his parents hadn't barged into the school to tell her the news that he'd been found first. They might not, if they thought she was better off distracting herself with schoolwork and that they could patch him up to look half-decent by the time she got home. Sometimes, they really did listen to everything Jazz said about causing their kids undue stress.

They just didn't happen to remember to apply that when potential possession by a ghost was involved.

Valerie nibbled on a bit of cheese and popped another grape into her mouth. "How did you know?" she asked after the silence had stretched. "That you could, um, become Phantom?"

"That's what I looked like when I woke up after the accident," Danny said. "It freaked me out. Snow white hair and glowing green eyes? That's not my reflection. Except it _was_. I panicked. Sam and Tucker were there, but they weren't exactly calmer." He hesitated. Sam _had_ been calmer, but he knew what he remembered wasn't entirely…. Desiree had interfered, and now everything was muddled when he thought back to that and everything that had happened. "I managed to change back. I thought that was the end of it, but…."

"It wasn't."

Danny smiled. "Yeah, not by a long shot. But I can control my powers now. It probably wasn't any worse than you felt when Technus made your new suit and you realized that he'd basically melded ghost tech to your body."

Valerie winced, the hand with her cheese-and-cracker combo dropping back to her lap. "Actually, I didn't think about the consequences right away. Or nearly as soon as I should've. Mr. Masters looked it over when I asked and said it was fine. I didn't let it bother me after that, but…. I don't know if I can believe him anymore, and that's scarier."

"Technus might actually answer some of your questions if we can trade him some decent electronics for the info. We don't have to tell him Tucker put a virus in there first that'll activate if he tries to use it for global domination."

Valerie smirked. "You really think he'd fall for that?"

"Definitely," Danny said as Valerie ate her cracker. "He likes to talk, too, so that won't be a problem, either."

They lapsed back into silence, Valerie intermittently munching on the food Lancer had put out. Danny was glad someone was eating it. He knew he should, but his stomach was twisting itself into knots every time he thought about the upcoming conversation with his parents.

The whole point of coming to stay with Mr. Lancer had been to avoid this, and now Lancer was the reason it was happening.

He hadn't counted on that.

He wasn't convinced it hadn't been a secret hope in Jazz's plan, though. For all that she was willing to wait until he was ready to tell his parents, she kept bringing it up. Especially in subtle ways, like she thought he might not notice but might still take the hint.

"Hey, Val?"

"Mmm?"

"How do I tell them?"

She swallowed and shifted, pulling her legs up on the bed so that she was easily facing him. "You just need to tell them. It's hard, but…. Danny, you scared me earlier. I didn't want it to be true because I didn't want everything it meant to be true. I didn't want to know that I was the reason you're hurt, that I've been hunting you down for so long, that I've been threatening you and then five minutes later running into you at school because we're both late for class. And the stuff about Vlad…. They consider him a friend, right? So to know that he's Plasmius, that he's done all these awful things…." She shrugged. "Sometimes you don't wanna believe it, you know? But then you showed me, and I couldn't deny it, and it was just…overwhelming."

"Yeah," Danny agreed, "that's why I wasn't sure how to tell them. I mean, I tried in the beginning, but they'd cut me off and start talking about their latest inventions, and I just…. It was easier not to say anything. That's why I didn't really try with you."

"I don't blame you." She bit her lip. "But you know how big this is, right? Vlad's not just the mayor. He's a billionaire—"

"Only because he used his powers for his own gain." Danny tilted his head as he looked at her. "And you know that's exactly why you need to be careful, too, right? Because if you think I ruined your life, Vlad can do way worse. He won't hesitate."

"That's not stopping Mr. Lancer."

"I know." Danny hesitated and then confessed, "I thought it would. I hoped it would. I don't…. I don't want to be responsible for something bad happening, and I feel like I would be. Because knowledge is dangerous."

"Ignorance is dangerous, too." Valerie picked at a loose thread on the bedspread. "The way I've been treating you is proof of that. And I guess…. I guess it means I need to keep my eyes open for stuff like that. Because not all ghosts _are_ bad, so I shouldn't hunt them blindly."

"I've got some ghost files on my computer," Danny said. "I can share them with you. You've probably figured out most of the stuff, but it might fill in a few blanks. Most of the ghosts you've been after are the ones you want to keep hunting, but they aren't that bad compared to some of the other ones we've faced in the past."

"Like Pariah Dark."

"Yeah, like him."

"I just wanted to help."

"And I was afraid you'd get yourself killed. Exposing you to your dad was the only way I could think of to keep you safe. I'm sorry that I did it that way, not giving you a choice when it was your secret, but I don't regret doing it."

"He would've figured it out sooner rather than later anyway."

"Was it bad when he found out?"

Valerie laughed. "He said I was grounded until I graduated, but he didn't hold me to that. He worries about me. He's my dad. He wasn't impressed when he found out I started hunting again, either. I _was_ grounded for a month then. He just…. He wants the best for me, you know?"

"And he doesn't want to think about you getting hurt."

"Exactly. I mean, he is trying to find a balance between letting me do my own thing, making mistakes and learning, and being worried about me, his only child, his _baby_ , going out into the world and not needing him." She was smirking now. "He knows I'm growing up. And he's even admitted to me that I'm good at ghost hunting. So it's hard for him to let me do this, but he understands why I'm still doing it. Why I don't want to give it up." She paused. "You're right, though. He'd be a lot happier knowing there was someone out there with me to watch my back."

"Does he, um, know about your new suit?"

"Not exactly. He just knows it's new. I thought the whole truth would freak him out."

"So you might tell him about it after we try talking to Technus?"

She shrugged. "I guess it's like you with your folks. You don't want them to panic more than they already are. Or will be, I guess." She picked the stem off another grape and popped it into her mouth. "You're still their son, Danny. Being Phantom doesn't change that."

"You don't think it'll change that for them?"

She snorted. "I've met your parents. It might make a difference for some people, but not them."

"Even when they find out about Vlad?"

"Why does that matter?"

Danny picked up a cracker and a piece of cheese, more for something to nibble on and avoid talking than because he was remotely hungry. It was gone all too quickly, but he wasn't sure he could stomach another one. "He was their best friend in college. And Plasmius…. What if they think he's just that way because of his ghost half? What if they think being Phantom changes what makes me _me_? What if they think I'm going to become like him unless they can change me, or rip Phantom out of me, or something like that? I can't…. What if they think they need to _fix_ me?"

Valerie raised an eyebrow. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing to fix."

"But what if they don't see it that way?"

"Then you show them. Prove that you're still you."

"How? They can just turn around and tell me that ghosts try to trick you, that they're master manipulators, maybe even that _I'm_ just _playing_ at being me to try to trick them, and I…. I can't do it, Val. If they don't accept me, I don't think I'll be able to change their minds."

He hadn't meant to break down in front of her. He hadn't meant to cry. But his throat had closed up, and tears had pricked at his eyes and then overflowed, and now he wasn't sure he could stop.

Lancer was so sure that this would go well. When he talked about it, Danny wanted to believe it. It was easy to believe it.

But knowing that Lancer had phoned, that his parents were coming to retrieve Danny _Fenton_ , somehow still terrified him. Because however much of the truth Lancer had told them—that he was injured in a ghost fight, that he was recovering—it wouldn't have explained enough of anything. They would have asked questions, and Danny didn't know if Lancer had managed to dodge them. How had he disappeared from the hospital? Why hadn't he called them? Which ghost had done this?

If they decided Phantom was the problem, if they didn't accept that Phantom wasn't some separate entity and was in a fact a part of him, that would be it. He wouldn't be able to go home until Jazz convinced them to change their minds. And he wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to trust them even if they did.

Everything could fall apart, and his life as he knew it would be over.

"Don't be stupid. You know they love you. They're not going to just see you as some ghost. _I_ didn't."

He sniffed. "You've worked with Phantom before."

"And your parents never have?"

Well, his dad had, once. But only once, and there had been many opportunities beyond that. "It's not the same."

"Between me and them finding out? Or them finding out about you and my dad finding out about me? Because, sure. It's not the same. Your parents will be too busy being thrilled that you're a ghost hunter and that you're genuinely interested in the family business to worry about the danger you're in doing it."

Danny just looked at her. Val hopped up from the bed, grabbed a box of tissues from its perch on the edge of one of the bookshelves, and threw it at him. "Whatever happens," she said, her voice softening as she sat back down and he blew his nose, "I'll be here for you. So will Jazz, and Sam and Tucker, and even Mr. Lancer. You're not alone in this, Danny, even if it feels like it."

"Thanks," he mumbled, wiping at his nose again. He knew he shouldn't worry too much before it happened, shouldn't fear they'd assume the worst—but how could he stop, when he knew how easily they could explain away the truth if they tried?

If they decided they'd rather have a son who was dead and gone than one who was partly the monster they hated?

"You're overthinking it," Valerie said. "They're not…. They're not just going to abandon you because of who you are. Some people might, because some people aren't even willing to learn to accept something, especially when it's something they were wrong about, but your folks are decent. They're going to accept you, whatever you look like and whoever you are."

"I just…." He wished he had more time. He wished he didn't have to do this when Jazz wasn't around. When Sam and Tucker weren't around. When it wasn't because he was forced into it, by circumstance and not-so-subtle pressuring.

"It'll be fine," Valerie assured him.

He'd called things _fine_ when they weren't too many times to believe that, though.

"I'll stay right here if you want me to. You know that. And like I said, you can distract them with my secret if you think it'll help. I'm fine with you telling them instead of me if you need to."

They would accept him. Probably. They had before, in different circumstances. He knew that. But he couldn't quiet the little voice that shrilled in panic in the back of his mind, wondering what he'd do when they didn't.

"I'll get you some water." Valerie picked up the food tray and balanced it on one arm, no doubt thinking they weren't going to finish it anyway. "Try to breathe and get some rest before they come, okay? I can leave you alone or stay, whatever you like."

"You can stay," he whispered. It was nice to have a mediating voice. Being alone with his thoughts right now….

She smiled. "I'll be back with your water."

Danny closed his eyes and tried to rest, like she'd said. When she came back, he heard her set it on the table beside him. He murmured a thank you and heard her settle on the floor beside him. The occasional rasp of paper against cloth told him she'd found a book. She was letting him decide if he wanted to talk. It was nice, at least being able to control that much.

The crash outside that splintered the silence had him jerking upright, and he didn't need to hear the doorbell a moment later to know what had happened.

He saw Valerie looking up at him, and he swallowed. "They're here."


End file.
